A beautiful, stunningly ambitious tale of endurance, identity, and memory, for fans of Min Jin Lee's Pachinko and Georgia Hunter’s We Were the Lucky Ones.

Longlisted for the Walter Scott Prize

Longlisted for the HWA Debut Crown

Shortlisted for the 2020 Singapore Literature Prize

'A heartbreaking but hopeful story about memory, trauma and ultimately love.' New York Times

A beautiful story of endurance, identity, and memory in WWII Singapore, for fans of Min Jin Lee's Pachinko and Nguyen Phan Que Mai's The Mountains Sing

Singapore, 1942. As Japanese troops sweep down Malaysia and into Singapore, a village is ransacked. Only three survivors remain, one of them a tiny child.

In a neighbouring village, seventeen-year-old Wang Di is bundled into the back of a troop carrier and shipped off to a Japanese military rape camp. In the year 2000, her mind is still haunted by her experiences there, but she has long been silent about her memories of that time. It takes twelve-year-old Kevin, and the mumbled confession he overhears from his ailing grandmother, to set in motion a journey into the unknown to discover the truth.

Weaving together two timelines and two life-changing secrets, How We Disappeared is an evocative, profoundly moving and utterly dazzling novel heralding the arrival of a new literary star.