Award-winning historian and author shares his second volume of his memoirs.

 

“Does home have to be a country or a city? … Or is home this house or that? We have been fortunate. … We seemed always to have been home.” The book “Home is Where We Are” is by 90-year-old Prof Wang Gungwu, former vice-chancellor of the University of Hong Kong, and emeritus professor at Australian National University and university professor at the National University of Singapore, along with his late wife, Margaret Wang. She was the head of the English Department at the Malayan Teachers College.

In this second volume of his memoirs after “Home is Not Here”, the award-winning historian and author shares his account of his university education in Singapore and the UK, and the early years of his career as an academic in Malaysia, which shows the ambition and the choices of a generation that saw it their responsibility to build the new nations of Southeast Asia. His sharing also touches on love, family life and the life of the mind.

His wife’s perspective is also peppered in the 288-page book, along with her own family story, and her early impressions of her husband, then a young bearded poet. The book is wise and moving, and is a fascinating reflection on identity and belonging, and on the ability of the individual to find a place amidst the historical currents that have shaped Asia.

Prof Wang is the author of some 20 books published by NUS Press.

To attend the book launch on Facebook Live on October 20 at 5pm, click HERE. No registration is required. To purchase the book for S$24, go to: https://nuspress.nus.edu.sg/products/home-is-where-we-are.