Translated by Shanna Tan
**Will mail out after 7th April 2024.
Dakota 达哥打 by Wong Koi Tet, winner of the 2020 Singapore Literature Prize (Chinese Creative Non-fiction), meets readers in an English translation by Shanna Tan.
Dakota is a sharp and whimsical work of literary creative non-fiction about coming-of-age in the 1970-80s in an iconic Singapore neighbourhood lost to urban renewal named Dakota Crescent. The deeply personal vignettes stitch together a mosaic of Singapore’s urban history. Humorous with a touch of melancholy, Wong Koi Tet’s evocative writing makes us reflect on place as an anchor of history, heritage and home.
‘Dakota is about a place that has expired, about distant memories and forgotten things, but writing it enveloped me in a comforting intimacy. – Wong Koi Tet
Limited box sets of Dakota are available here.
PUBLICATIONS IN LITERARY MAGAZINES
"The Longkau's Name" originally appeared in The Common.
“My Take on Pantheism,” “21 Grams,” and “The Neighborhood Zoo” originally appeared in The Southern Review (Autumn 2022)
“An Instant,” “Because of Cod Liver Oil,” and “Zipping Up” originally appeared in The Georgia Review (Winter 2023)
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Wong Koi Tet (Singapore, 1973) is an esteemed writer in the Singapore Chinese literary scene and has worn many hats in his writing career: a journalist with a local Chinese newspaper, an editor of literary magazine Afterwards in the 1990s, a drama scriptwriter for the local television channel and now, a part-time creative writing lecturer at Nanyang Technological University. Since 1995, he has published several books of prose, poetry, short stories, and cultural commentary. Dakota 达哥打 was first published in 2018 and clinched the 2020 Singapore Literature Prize in Chinese Creative Non-fiction.
ABOUT THE TRANSLATOR
Shanna Tan is a Singaporean translator working from Korean, Chinese and Japanese into English. She translated the bestselling Welcome to the Hyunam-dong Bookshop by Hwang Bo-reum (Bloomsbury, 2023) and is working on a few more projects at the moment.