Lion City

Singapore and the Invention of Modern Asia

By: Jeevan Vasagar

Narrated by: Hugh Kermode

Lion City tells the extraordinary story of Singapore - the world's most successful city state.

In 1965, Singapore's GDP per capita was on a par with Jordan. Now it has outstripped Japan. After the Second World War and a sudden rupture with newly formed Malaysia, Singapore found itself independent - and facing a crisis. It took the bloody-minded determination and vision of Lee Kuan Yew, its founding premier, to take a small island of diverse ethnic groups with a fragile economy and hostile neighbours and meld it into Asia's first globalised city.

Lion City examines the different faces of Singaporean life - from education and health to art, politics and demographic challenges - and reveals how in just half a century, Lee forged a country with a buoyant economy and distinctive identity. It explores the darker side of how this was achieved, too, through authoritarian control that led to it being dubbed 'Disneyland with the death penalty'.

Jeevan Vasagar, former Singapore correspondent for the Financial Times, masterfully takes us through the intricate history, present and future of this unique diamond-shaped island one degree north of the equator, where new and old have remained connected. Lion City is a personal, insightful and essential guide to the city and how its remarkable rise is shaping East Asia and the rest of the world.

©2021 Jeevan Vasagar (P)2021 Hachette Audio UK

Critic reviews

Unexpectedly moving...a good introduction for the general reader suddenly turns to questions of love, grief, deceit and identity (Sholto Byrnes)