External influences on Singaporean writer Yeng Pway-Ngon's works

Abstract

Yeng Pway-Ngon is undoubtedly the most significant and seasoned local writer in the Singaporean Chinese literary circle. He started by writing modern poetry and was the most important modernist poet in Singapore and Malaysia in the 1970s. In the 1980s, out of his conscience and moral principle as an intellectual, he began a decade of satirical essay writing following in Lu Xun's footsteps. His essays have become memorandums of the social changes in Singapore since the 1980s. In the 1990s, he produced a series of novels filled with influences of psychoanalysis, Calvino and Martin Buber, and hence caused the transformation in Chinese literature of the world as a breath of fresh air. Winning two annual "Asiaweek Magazine's Ten Best Chinese Novels Award" and "Singapore Literature Prize" twice is indeed unprecedented in the Singaporean Chinese literary circle. With this, Yeng Pway-Ngon has become the most anticipated Singaporean Chinese writer. © Copyright by Foreign Literature Studies. All rights reserved.