Home Is Not Here

Synopsis

Praise for Home is Where We Are, winner of the Singapore Literature Prize 2022:

The life of the mind celebrated in this memoir is at once exciting and sobering, a corrective of sorts to the acceleration of the age. This is a book read slowly - a book to cherish.

Wang Gungwu is one of Asia’s most important public intellectuals. He is best-known for his explorations of Chinese history in the long view, and for his writings on the Chinese diaspora.  With Home is Not Here, the historian of grand themes turns to a single life history: his own.

In this volume, Wang talks about his multicultural upbringing and life under British rule. He was born in Surabaya, Java, but his parents’ orientation was always to China. Wang grew up in the plural, multi-ethnic town of Ipoh, Malaya (now Malaysia). He learned English in colonial schools and was taught the Confucian classics at home. After the end of WWII and Japanese occupation, he left for the National  Central University in Nanjing to study alongside some of the finest of his generation of Chinese undergraduates. The victory of Mao Zedong’s Communist Party interrupted his education, and he ends this volume with his return to Malaya.

Wise and moving, this is a fascinating reflection on family, identity, and belonging, and on the ability of the individual to find a place amid the historical currents that have shaped Asia and the world. 

About The Author

Wang Gungwu, formerly vice chancellor of the University of Hong Kong, is emeritus professor at Australian National University and university professor at the National University of Singapore. He is the author of some 20 books, including Home is Not Here, published by NUS Press.  

Margaret Wang was educated at the University of Malaya, Homerton College, Cambridge, and the Australian National University. She was head of the English Department at the Malayan Teachers College.