Quick Facts
Biography
Adrian Tan Gim Hai (born 1966) is a lawyer and author from Singapore. He is best known as the writer of the fiction novels The Teenage Textbook (1988) and The Teenage Workbook (1989), which were bestsellers in Singapore in the late-1980s.
Tan wrote the two novels while he was an undergraduate student at the National University of Singapore (NUS). The two books sold over 50,000 copies. In 1998, The Teenage Textbook was made into a film (The Teenage Textbook Movie) starring Melody Chen and Caleb Goh, which topped the box office in Singapore for four weeks. It was also made into a stage play by The Necessary Stage, starring Hossan Leong and Mark Richmond.
While at university, Tan represented NUS as a debater in international competitions and on televised debates in Singapore. More recently, he has appeared as a guest judge on the International Emmy Award-nominated debate TV show The Arena on Mediacorp Channel 5, and as a regular judge on the debate show Bridging Asia on Channel NewsAsia.
Tan is currently a partner with TSMP Law Corporation in Singapore, specialising in intellectual property, information technology and property law. He was previously with Stamford Law (now known as Morgan Lewis Stamford LLC) and Drew & Napier.
In 2015, The Teenage Textbook was selected by The Business Times as one of the Top 10 English Singapore books from 1965–2015, alongside titles by Arthur Yap and Daren Shiau.
