Book Launch | A Dialogue Across Civilisations: The Polis and the People by Tan Wah-Piow
Date: 25 February 2026 | Time: 8:00 PM
Speakers: Tan Wah Piow, Dr Lim Mah Hui, Dr Azmil Tayeb
Moderator: Yeong Pey Jung (Penang Institute)
Co-organisers: Gerakbudaya and Monsoons Malaysia
Book Overview:
In A Dialogue Across Civilisations, Tan Wah-Piow crafts an ambitious and compelling work of political imagination. Structured across ten scenes that move from contemporary Washington to ancient Athens, imperial China, revolutionary Beijing, and the digital spheres of the present, the book convenes history’s most influential thinkers—Socrates, Confucius, Aristotle, Plato, Marx, Lu Xun, He-Yin Zhen, Hu Shih, Mao, Gramsci, and others—in a single, searching conversation.
Together, they grapple with questions that continue to shape our world: What constitutes justice in a time of widening inequality? Can virtue withstand the pressures of power? How do dialogue and reason survive in an era of technology, populism, and polarisation? And what might civilisations learn from one another without erasing their foundations?
Blending dramatic form with philosophical inquiry, Tan offers a work of rare breadth and clarity. A Dialogue Across Civilisations is neither a celebration of the past nor a prescription for the future, but an invitation to re-engage with the fundamental debates that underlie political life. In a moment defined by noise and division, this book argues that the renewal of civilisation begins with the renewal of dialogue.
About the Author:
Tan Wah Piow is a writer, lawyer, and advocate for democratic dialogue whose work spans political philosophy, legal practice, and civic engagement. Educated at the University of Singapore and at Baliol College, Oxford, he has spent decades examining questions of justice, governance, and the moral responsibilities of the state. His experiences across Singapore, Malaysia, the United Kingdom, and the wider diaspora, as a student leader, political exile, and public intellectual, inform his enduring commitment to non-coercive civic discourse.