The Great Reclamation

Informationen zum Autor Born and raised in Singapore, Rachel Heng is the author of the novel Suicide Club , translated into ten languages. Her short fiction has appeared in The New Yorker , Glimmer Train , McSweeney’s , and elsewhere. She received her MFA from the Michener Center for Writers and has received grants and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, Sewanee Writers’ Conference, and the National Arts Council of Singapore, among others. She is currently an assistant professor of English at Wesleyan University. Klappentext 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. Leseprobe Chapter One Decades later, the kampong would trace it all back to this very hour, waves draining the light from this slim, hungry moon. Decades later, they would wonder what could have been had the Lees simply turned back, had some sickness come upon the father manning the outboard motor, or some screaming fit befallen the youngest, forcing them to abandon the day's work and steer their small wooden craft home. Decades later, they would wonder if any difference could have been made at all. Or would past still coalesce into present: The uncle dying the way he did, an outcast burned to blackened bone in a house some said was never his anyway. The kampong still destroyed, not swallowed whole by the waves in accordance with some angry god's decree, as the villagers had always feared, but taken to pieces and sold for parts by the inhabitants themselves. If the little boy, the sweetest, most sensitive boy in the kampong, would nevertheless have become a man who so easily bent the future to his will. Perhaps he would have; perhaps this had nothing to do with the hour, the boat, the sea, and everything to do with the boy. But these questions could only be a...

Product details

• Authors: Rachel Heng
• Publisher: Riverhead
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 28.03.2023
• EAN: 9780593713044
• ISBN: 978-0-593-71304-4
• No. of pages: 451
• Dimensions: 150 mm x 228 mm x 29 mm
• Subject: Fiction > Narrative literature