Central Library at the National Library Building - Programme Room 1 (Basement 1)
07:00 PM - 08:30 PM
Free Admission
About the Programme
Join us at Singapore Literature Book Club as we discuss The Original Daughter. As this will be an interactive session, please come prepared to discuss the book and share your thoughts!
About the Author
Jemimah Wei was born and raised in Singapore and is now based between Singapore and the United States. She is a National Book Foundation 5 under 35 Honouree, William Van Dyke Short Story Prize winner, and was a Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford University and Felipe P. De Alba Fellow at Columbia University. A recipient of awards and fellowships from Singapore’s National Arts Council, Hemmingway House, Sewanee Writers’ Conference, Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, and Writers in Paradise, her writing has appeared in Joyland, Guernica, and Narrative, amongst others. She is presently a senior Prose editor at The Massachusetts Review.
Her highly anticipated debut novel, The Original Daughter, is a Good Morning America Book Club Pick, a New York Times Editors’ Pick, and an Indie Next pick. It debuted at #1 on the Straits Times Bestseller list and has been named a best book of Spring by Harpers Bazaar, Elle, Vogue, Apple Books, and more.
About the Book
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-take-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.
About Singapore Literature Book Club
From NLB’s Singapore collection comes a book club with a unique local flavour. Discuss books by both well-known and emerging Singaporean authors touching on topics close to home. Get acquainted with local literature and discover national literary treasures right here at the libraries.
To find out more about NLB's literary art events, join our mailing list at https://go.gov.sg/la-edm!
About LearnX Communities
The Singapore Literature Book Club is one of NLB’s many LearnX Communities that connect like-minded people to create a modern kampong of communal learning. These communities cover a wide range of topics and can be found in libraries all over the island.
Interested? Head over to https://go.gov.sg/what-is-a-learnx-community to join an existing community or start one of your own!