Narrative Form and the Cosmopolitan Imaginary: Claire Tham’s The Inlet and Akshita Nanda’s Nimita’s Place

In this chapter, I use sociologist Ulrich Beck’s concept of ‘cosmopolitanization’ as a way of considering the Singapore state’s efforts in molding and calibrating twenty-first century Singapore society to take on a desired cosmopolitan cast. Focusing on the period between the late 1990s and 2015, I examine some of the state’s cosmopolitanization strategies in terms of immigration policy and public rhetoric, as well as the ideological tensions and fissures that have emerged as a result. I then argue for the idea of a broader cosmopolitan imaginary not reducible to state directives to encompass alternative visions of cosmopolitanism posed by contemporary Anglophone writers in their creative use of specific narrative forms. Two novels—Claire Tham’s The Inlet (2013) and Akshita Nanda’s Nimita’s Place (2018)—are discussed as exemplary works deploying the specific conventions of noir fiction and the Partition novel respectively to examine the social realities of mobility and mixture in their critique of Singapore as a cosmopolis.