The Original Daughter

A dazzling story of ambition and sisterhood in turn-of-the-millennium Singapore by National Book Award '5 Under 35' honouree Jemimah Wei?

Singapore, 1996. Before Arin, Genevieve Yang was an only child. Living with her parents and grandmother in a single-room flat in Bedok, she is saddled with an unexpected sibling when Arin appears, the shameful legacy of a grandfather long believed to be dead.

At once collaborators and sisters, Gen and Arin grow up inseparable, navigating the intensity of life in working-class Singapore - where urgent insistence on achievement demands self-immolation in the realms of imagination, work, and play. But as the rapidly modernising, winner-takes-all world threatens to leave one behind as the other's star rises exponentially, the sisters must weigh their allegiances and bonds, the cost of success and ultimately reckon with who they've become. What results is a story that cracks open the fault lines of Singaporean society, our desperate need for acceptance and our yearning to be loved.

Vivid and visceral, The Original Daughter is a breathtaking act of empathy by a new literary star.

'A tour de force that I'll never forget' QIAN JULIE WANG

'I read in a fever' EMILY ITAMI

'Heartfelt and meticulously written' SHARLENE TEO

'A true literary talent' TASH AW