Shortlisted for NUS Singapore History Prize 2021
Winner of Singapore Literature Prize 2018, Fiction
Shortlisted for Singapore Book Awards 2018, Best Fiction Title
Finalist for the Epigram Books Fiction Prize 2016

Siew Li leaves her husband and children in Tiong Bahru to fight for freedom in the jungles of Malaya. Decades later, a Malaysian journalist returns to her homeland to uncover the truth of a massacre committed during the Emergency. And in Singapore, Siew Li's niece Stella finds herself accused of being a Marxist conspirator.

Jeremy Tiang's debut novel dives into the tumultuous days of leftist movements and political detentions in Singapore and Malaysia. It follows an extended family from the 1940s to the present day as they navigate the choppy political currents of the region. What happens when the things that divide us also bind us together?

About the Author

Jeremy Tiang’s writing has appeared in The Guardian, Esquire (Singapore), Brooklyn Rail, Drunken Boat, Meanjin, Ambit, Quarterly Literary Review Singapore and the first two volumes of The Epigram Book of Best New Singaporean Short Stories.

He won the Golden Point Award in 2009 and has been shortlisted for the Iowa Review Award and American Short Fiction Prize. He has also translated more than ten books from the Chinese, including work by You Jin, Wong Yoon Wah, Yeng Pway Ngon, Yan Geling and Zhang Yueran, and has been awarded translation grants from PEN American Center, the National Endowment for the Arts (US) and the National Museum of Taiwanese Literature. Jeremy’s plays include The Last Days of Limehouse (Yellow Earth, London), Floating Bones (The Arts House; translations of Han Lao Da and Quah Sy Ren one-acts) and A Dream of Red Pavilions (Pan Asian Rep, NYC; adapted from the novel by Cao Xueqin).