Original Daughter

Singapore, 1996. Genevieve Yang is an only child, living with her parents and grandmother in a single-room flat in Bedok, when her grandfather rises from the dead. Long disappeared, he had a secret second family in Malaysia, who now suddenly deposits Arin, an unwanted daughter, into their home. Gen and Arin grow up as sisters, older and younger, entwined with each other as they navigate the intensity of life in a working-class family in Singapore: a place where insistence on achievement demands constant sacrifice in the realms of imagination and play. As childhood and adolescence layer new experiences onto their lives, Gen and Arin must reinvent themselves time and again. As the sisters struggle toward individual redemption, we see the fault lines of Singaporean society, human pride and longing: our desperate need for acceptance and security, our yearning to be loved. Vivid and visceral, THE ORIGINAL DAUGHTER is a breathtaking act of empathy by a new literary star.