The Great Reclamation

On a quiet moonlit night, Ah Boon, young and terrified, takes his first trip out to sea in his father's fishing boat - a rite of passage for the boys of the kampong. As the air hums and the wind howls across the waves, a mysterious, impossible island materialises in the darkness; an island, bountiful with fish, that Ah Boon soon learns only he has the ability to find.

But this is only the beginning of the story, and as Ah Boon grows up, alongside Siok Mei, the spirited girl he has fallen in love with, he finds himself caught in the tragic sweep of Singapore's history. When the Japanese army invades, the resistance rises, and their small nation hurtles towards rebirth, the kampong and the impossible islands that surround it are thrown into jeopardy, and the two friends must decide who they will become - and what they are willing to give up.

About the Author

Rachel Heng is a Singaporean writer who graduated from Columbia University with a BA in Comparative Literature Society. After working in the finance sector in London for several years, Rachel moved to Austin, TX, to pursue an MFA in Fiction and Screenwriting at the Michener Center for Writers, where she is currently a James A. Michener Fellow and assistant editor for the O Henry Prize anthology. Rachel's short fiction has received a Pushcart Prize Special Mention, Prairie Schooner's Jane Geske Award, and has been featured by the Huffington Post.

Her fiction as been published widely in literary journals such as The Offing, Prairie Schooner, The Adroit Journal, the minnesota review and elsewhere. Her debut novel, Suicide Club, is out in July and will be translated into 7 languages.

Dimensions (cm): 3.2 x 15.4 x 23.3