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Singapore author Ng Yi-Sheng’s Utama casts legendary prince Sang Nila Utama in a brilliant, complicated light
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Home-grown writer Ng Yi-Sheng's Utama tells the story of Singapura founder Sang Nila Utama through the dispossessed.
PHOTOS: EPIGRAM BOOKS, ST FILE
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By Ng Yi-Sheng
Fiction/Epigram Books/Paperback/360 pages/$26.90
The 13th-century Palembang prince Sang Nila Utama was said to have – among other deeds recorded in the 17th-century Sulalatus Salatin or Malay Annals – taken 39 brides and left them all with leprosy. Today, he is remembered by Singaporeans – if at all – as no more than the prince who heroically tossed his crown overboard to save his sinking Temasek-bound ship, thereafter founding Singapura.
