Singapore Women's Hall of Fame

Meira Chand

Acclaimed Writer

A war-time baby born to a Swiss mother and Indian father in England, Meira Chand then married and moved with her husband to Japan and raised two children. She spent some years in India too before she moved to Singapore and made it home. 

The insights from such a rich life have helped Meira become one of Singapore’s small but growing pool of internationally acclaimed novelists. Three of her nine published novels, The Gossamer Fly, The Bonsai Tree and The Painted Cage, were longlisted for the Booker Prize.  

Her eighth novel, A Different Sky, was inspired by a conversation she had with former Singapore president, S R Nathan. It follows the lives of three families in the 30 years leading up to Singapore's independence. 

A Different Sky, published in 2010, was selected by Oprah Winfrey in 2011 for her recommended reading list, selected as a Book of the Month by the UK bookshop chain Waterstones, and longlisted for the 2012 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. 

In 2023, Meira became a recipient of the Cultural Medallion, Singapore’s highest accolade for the arts.  

Meira was born in London during WWII and has written about feeling dislocated throughout her life, first as a biracial child in England and then as an expatriate in Japan. She moved to Japan with her late husband, and raised a son and a daughter, while teaching art at an international school there. 

She said she did not fit in. “I was dismissed on three levels. I was dismissed as a woman. I was dismissed as a writer. And I was dismissed because I was a non-Japanese,” she told The Straits Times in 2023. 

Meira didn’t fit in in India too. But her six years there got her started writing short stories, which were published in an anthology. “I was surprised at the speed and ease with which these stories came to me, and the clarity of insight writing gave me,” she said. 

She sees writing as an investigative inner journey, and that journey began for her in India. 

“All these years, my position was always a very uncomfortable one. When you have to live on the periphery, you cannot participate in the society you are living in. For me, writing was a way of connecting, not only with the culture I was living in, but also exploring the society I was living in. It was a way to connect with the oneness and common humanity of all peoples, whatever their difference or culture. In that position, writing became all-encompassing, a vein of great richness in my life.”  

Meira got an MA in creative writing from the Edith Cowan University in Perth and a PhD in creative writing from the University of Western Australia. She moved to Singapore in 1997 and became a citizen in 2011. 

“When I came to live in Singapore, I found myself for the first time in an ethnically multicultural society different from anywhere I had lived before. Here, my multiplicity of identities was not only nothing out of the ordinary but was valued and embraced,” she said. 

Her novel House of the Sun, set in contemporary India, was adapted in 1990 for the stage in London where it had a successful run at Theatre Royal Stratford East. It was the first Asian play with an all-Asian cast and direction to be performed in London. 

LKY The Musical, staged in Singapore in 2015 and 2022, was based on a story written by Meira. It was nominated for Life Theatre Awards, including the Best Original Script.    

Apart from her writing, Meira has been involved in various programmes to develop literary arts and nurture young writers in Singapore. Writers who inspired her include Patrick White, V.S. Naipaul, Susan Hill, Rose Tremain, Brian Moore, Thornton Wilder, Jane Austen and Ann Enright. 

Earlier, Meira was regional chair for the Commonwealth Writers Prize for the Southeast Asia and South Pacific Region. Besides being an NLB Distinguished Reader, she has chaired the English sub-committee for READ! Singapore, a reading programme by the National Library Board, and served as an assessor and mentor at the National University of Singapore Centre for the Arts Creative Writing Programme. She has also served on the Board of the National Arts Council and is currently a mentor for the Singapore Book Council’s writing mentorship programme.  

“There is something very special about reading a book. It is a journey reader and writer take together,” she said. 

“Any creative person will tell you this: inspiration comes when you’re working. One idea leads to another idea, and sometimes you end up where you didn’t expect to be.” – Interview with Esplanade Offstage, 2016