The Great Reclamation
A Novel
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- $13.99
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
WINNER OF THE NEW AMERICAN VOICES AWARD
LONGLISTED FOR THE ANDREW CARNEGIE MEDAL FOR EXCELLENCE AND THE JOYCE CAROL OATES PRIZE
NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY TIME, TOWN & COUNTRY, KIRKUS, ELECTRIC LITERATURE AND BOOKPAGE!
"Stunning…epic…impressive…It is a pleasure to simply live alongside these characters.”—The New York Times
"A deep and powerful love story."—NBC The Today Show
"A beautifully written novel. I loved so much in this book: the richly imagined setting, the complicated love story, and the heartbreaking way history can tear apart a family." —Ann Napolitano, New York Times bestselling author of Hello Beautiful
Set against a changing Singapore, a sweeping novel about one boy’s unique gifts and the childhood love that will complicate the fate of his community and country
Ah Boon is born into a fishing village amid the heat and beauty of twentieth-century coastal Singapore in the waning years of British rule. He is a gentle boy who is not much interested in fishing, preferring to spend his days playing with the neighbor girl, Siok Mei. But when he discovers he has the unique ability to locate bountiful, movable islands that no one else can find, he feels a new sense of obligation and possibility—something to offer the community and impress the spirited girl he has come to love.
By the time they are teens, Ah Boon and Siok Mei are caught in the tragic sweep of history: the Japanese army invades, the resistance rises, grief intrudes, and the future of the fishing village is in jeopardy. As the nation hurtles toward rebirth, the two friends, newly empowered, must decide who they want to be, and what they are willing to give up.
An aching love story and powerful coming-of-age that reckons with the legacy of British colonialism, the World War II Japanese occupation, and the pursuit of modernity, The Great Reclamation confronts the wounds of progress, the sacrifices of love, and the difficulty of defining home when nature and nation collide, literally shifting the land beneath people’s feet.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Heng (Suicide Club) charts the course of Singapore's independence through the story of a child who makes a fateful discovery. In 1941, seven-year-old Lee Ah Boon finds a cluster of islands hitherto unknown to the fishing village he lives in. Over the difficult years of Japanese occupation during WWII and the postwar period of self-governance under British rule, the mysterious islands prove to be an abundant source of fish. Then, local government officials, colloquially known as the Gah Men, propose a land reclamation project to build new housing. The landfill that results threatens the islands and the livelihood of the villagers, and it presents Boon with a difficult decision as a young man—should he defend his old life as a fisherman or fall in with the anticommunist Gah Men in the march toward progress? Heng wrings a great deal of emotion from Boon's experiences and relationships, notably a childhood friend who becomes a leftist and resists the Gah Men, and articulates the individual sacrifices and the inevitable divides that arise in nation building, skillfully capturing the inner psyche of a Singaporean everyman caught between two immovable worlds. This epic undertaking is not to be missed.
