The Great Reclamation

By: Rachel Heng

Narrated by: Windson Liong

Set against a changing Singapore, a sweeping novel about one boy's unique gifts and the childhood love that will complicate the fate of his community and country.

Ah Boon is born into a fishing village amid the heat and 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 neighbour 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 and possibility - something to offer the community and impress the spirited girl he has fallen in love with.

By the time they are teenagers, Ah Book and Siok Mei are caught in the tragic sweep of history: the Japanese army invades, the resistance rises and the future of their fishing village is in jeopardy. As the nation hurtles towards rebirth, the two friends must carve out their fate and decide who they will become - and what they are willing to give up.

This is a powerful coming-of-age, of both a young boy and a country, as well as an aching love story, that confronts the wounds of progress, the sacrifices of love, and the difficulty of defining home when nature and nation collide.

©2023 Rachel Heng (P)2023 Penguin Audio

Critic reviews

"The Great Reclamation is an extraordinary achievement - an epic love story set in a world at war within and without itself. Every page pulses with mud and magic. I loved it." (Miranda Cowley Heller, author of The Paper Palace)

"A monumental epic. A story of an entire nation reckoning with its past combined with a heart-wrenching love story. This one shouldn't be missed. I was spellbound." (Nathan Harris, author of The Sweetness of Water)

"A gorgeous novel about love, fate, free-will, and how, in wartime, one person's choices can have long-lasting consequences. The Great Reclamation is as sweeping as it is specific. Ah Boon's story will stay with me for a long time." (Lara Prescott, author of The Secrets We Kept)