A glimpse of my memoirs: Living the Asian Century
Dear friends,
When I turned 75 last year, I reached an obvious conclusion. The last lap had begun. If there was anything I wanted to complete, I should do it soon. This is how I arrived at the decision that the time had come to write my memoirs.
The good news is that I have done so. The memoirs, entitled Living the Asian Century: An Undiplomatic Memoir, will be released on 1st August. You can pre-order it now.
To give you a flavour of the book, I have attached the front and back cover, together with the blurbs it has received from early readers. In addition, I am sharing Chapter One with you. I hope that my memoirs will not only be an engaging read but also give readers a flavour of the early turbulent history of Singapore and provide some new insights about some of the key founding fathers of Singapore, like Lee Kuan Yew, Goh Keng Swee and S Rajaratnam.
At the same time, I hope that my memoirs will throw some light on the forces driving the emergence of the Asian century. In this regard, Project Syndicate (PS) has helped me enormously by alerting its subscribers that my memoirs will be coming out soon. Please see the note below from PS. I am happy to share it with you also.
I also want to alert my friends overseas that there will be three book launch events of this book in Hong Kong (5th September), New York (8th October) and Harvard (9th October). If you happen to be in these places on these dates, please let me know. I will try to get you an invitation to these book launch events. I will also have a book launch at Kinokuniya in Singapore on 17th August. Hope to see you then.
With warm regards,
Kishore
P.S. I am blessed that at my advanced age, I still receive interesting assignments. It has been a great honour to be invited by President-elect Prabowo to share with his teams my lifelong lessons in geopolitics and principles of governance. A photo of our meeting on 10th July is attached below.
PS Book Recommendations
By a PS Contributor
Welcome to PS Book Recommendations, your weekly source of reading inspiration, provided by PS contributors. This week's edition features Kishore Mahbubani, a distinguished fellow at the Asia Research Institute at the National University of Singapore; Todd G. Buchholz, a former White House director of economic policy and managing director of the Tiger hedge fund; and Jayati Ghosh, Professor of Economics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
By Kishore Mahbubani
Mahbubani says: “Asia’s rise ‘will be the dominant story in history books written 300 years from now,’ former US Treasury Secretary Larry Summers has declared. I lived through it. My childhood was marked by the trappings of developing-country poverty: undernourishment, no access to a flush toilet, an imprisoned father, and debt collectors at the door. But an indomitable mother saved me; her resilient spirit inspired me to overcome all the adversity I faced. I also benefited from the decisions of three extraordinary leaders who transformed Singapore – Lee Kuan Yew, Goh Keng Swee, and S. Rajaratnam. My diplomatic career eventually brought me close to all three. In Singapore, I also inhaled the vapors of three great Asian civilizations – Chinese, Indian, and Islamic – which are now enjoying a renaissance. Asia’s rise is a fascinating and complex story. I hope that my memoir, through both personal and political anecdotes, will illuminate a path through this complexity and go some way toward explaining why the world must begin preparing for the inevitable Asian Century.” Read more from Mahbubani.
