The Great Reclamation A Novel by Rachel Heng

Set against a changing Singapore, a sweeping novel about one boy’s unique gifts & the childhood love that will complicate the fate of his community & country 
Ah Boon is born into a fishing village amid the heat & 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 & possibility—something to offer the community & impress the spirited girl he has come to love.

By the time they are teens, Ah Boon & Siok Mei are caught in the tragic sweep of history: the Japanese army invades, the resistance rises, grief intrudes, & 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, & what they are willing to give up.

An aching love story & 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, & the difficulty of defining home when nature & nation collide, literally shifting the land beneath people’s feet.

Born & 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, & elsewhere. She received her MFA from the Michener Center for Writers & has received grants & fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, Sewanee Writers’ Conference, & the National Arts Council of Singapore, among others. She is currently an assistant professor of English at Wesleyan University.