It's the winner of Book of the Year for Singapore Book Awards 2016 and the winner of Singapore Literature Prize 2016 (English Fiction).

But The Art of Charlie Chan Hock Chye is an unusual book.

First, it's a graphic novel.

Second, it is one of the first Singaporean books to appear on international bestseller lists by both Amazon and The New York Times.

Lastly, the authorities were not cool with the book. In 2015, the National Arts Council (NAC) withdrew its S$8,000 publishing grant for the book, one day before its May 30 launch.

The book, by comic artist Sonny Liew, tells the story of comic book artist Charlie Chan during the formative years of Singapore’s modern history, interspersed with details of the late Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew, opposition politician Lim Chin Siong and events like the Hock Lee bus riots.

Liew back at an NAC event

Things have come full circle as The Singapore Writers Festival (SWF), an NAC event, decided to invite Liew as one of the guest speakers for a series of talks.

On Sunday, Nov. 6, cultural historian Ian Gordon moderated a dialogue session on "The Art of Sonny Liew" and initially kept to the "safe topics" by asking Liew about his previous works, his inspirations and his five favourite books.

After spending nearly 30 minutes tip-toeing around the subject on politics, Gordon finally pulled the trigger with his final question, the question that everyone was present on an early Sunday morning for:

Gordon: When you wrote that book (The Art of Charlie Chan Hock Chye), I'm going to phrase my question carefully, when you wrote that book, did you see it as some kind of form of political engagement or you are just trying to tell a story that you felt can be told and needed to be told?

This was what Liew revealed:

"In Singapore, I don't think you can do one thing without another to a certain extent. The whole point of the book was to, for myself doing the research, was to learn more about the history of Singapore, both the official mainstream version and the alternative accounts.

In writing it, the goal was to present all these different narratives in a fairly accessible manner about politics. So the engagement part was definitely one of the reasons for doing it.

Growing up in Singapore, I have always been interested in politics and history of Singapore.

Despite that, despite reading books here and there, I never got a clear sense of Singapore's history.

Even separation and merger, they were things I knew a lot, I had some details of what happened and the players involved, and I thought that if I can understand it from the research I did, maybe it might help in the conversation of the understanding of Singapore's history."

Of course, Liew couldn't resist a jibe at the authorities on his Facebook page earlier in the week.

Anyway, the easy road for the SWF organisers to take would have been to ignore Liew's book, and give the excuse that Liew's book was published last year.

But they didn't, so kudos to them for trying to clean up the mess that NAC started last year.

Related article:

Mothership.sg Reads: The Art of Charlie Chan Hock Chye

Government authority helps graphic novel “The Art Of Charlie Chan Hock Chye” achieve cult following

If you like what you read, follow us on Facebook and Twitter to get the latest updates.