My Lifelong Challenge is also the story of Mr Lee's own personal struggle to learn the Chinese language, which began when he was six years old and his Hakka maternal grandmother enrolled him in a Chinese class with fishermen's children. In evocative detail, the man born to English-speaking parents recounts his own feelings of rebellion and humiliation at different points in his life, when faced with the Chinese language and his own inadequacy in it.

This book describes in matter-of-fact yet vivid fashion his steely determination to improve his Chinese and reclaim his Chinese heritage, right up to the present when he is well into his eighties. In this book, we learn of Mr Lee's belief in a fundamental difference between the Chinese-educated and the English-educated and how it came about. He describes a scene of English-speaking students at the University of Singapore hostel revelling in party games even as Chinese-speaking students in the Chinese High School nearby were locked in a deadly face-off with the police in 1956, and gives the dire warning that "if Singapore students all turned out like those in the university hostel, Singapore would fail." Finally, Mr Lee distils his experiences of 50 years into eight precepts which he spells out at the end of his narrative.

The second half of this book is a compilation of essays by 22 Singaporeans. They include Mr Lee Hsien Loong, the current prime minister and son of Mr Lee Kuan Yew, and Ms Stephanie Sun, the well-known pop star. In these essays, the 22 recount their own language journeys, imbuing flesh and blood meaning to cold policy measures wrought over more than four decades.

This book is essential reading for anyone wanting to find more about Singapore's bilingualism policy and its chief architect. It breaks new ground by putting into the public domain information about education matters that has never been publicised. It is also an invaluable resource for all who are interested in the primeval interplay between language and politics.