The Great Reclamation
ABOUT
THE BOOK
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, a mysterious, impossible island materialises in the darkness; an island 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.
NOMINATING LIBRARY COMMENTS
Often described as well-paced, meditative exploration of Singapore’s wartime history, The Great Reclamation is well-aligned to what the Award is looking for: a well-written work that can travel well even while being ‘rooted in a particular locality’. As a novel of both epic scope in encompassing a country’s historical touchpoints and the ways these intersect with the lives of ordinary characters who have to live through them, Rachel’s novel has a wide appeal to both Singaporean and non-Singaporean readers.