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.
Vivid and visceral, The Original Daughter is a breathtaking act of empathy by a new literary star.
Praise
“Jemimah Wei’s debut The Original Daughter goes for all the big stuff: ambition, time, family, forgiveness, constructing the self. Thrilling, to find a new author with an appetite for the whole spectrum of living, and the skill to get it down true. A contract of sisterhood is signed, then life, then ambition, then disappointment and heartbreak and and and. Wei’s prose is delicious, propulsively hurdling us through the lives of Gen and Arin, who will live in my marrow forever. The Original Daughter is so much the real deal.”
—Kaveh Akbar, bestselling author of the National Book Award nominee Martyr!
“Fiery, funny, and incisive, The Original Daughter is at its core a ghost story. Once, invisibility was the hallmark of the working class, but Jemimah Wei knows in today’s world, where an internet connection allows one to walk through walls, be seen, disappear, and haunt from beyond the analog grave, a soulless transparency is power. A societal privilege ironically afforded to most everyone. This novel adroitly, yet playfully, turns the ways we see cultural appropriation, nepotism, and identity upside down. What a wise and wonderful read.”
—Paul Beatty, Man Booker Prize-winning author of The Sellout
“Jemimah Wei’s debut novel The Original Daughter is utterly engrossing. With elegantly composed, dense prose, Wei tells the story of two sisters—one who wears her ambition nakedly and loses all sense of herself when her life doesn’t turn out the way she believes it should and the other who quietly works just as hard, to vastly different ends. This is a story about how resentment can twist a woman into something unrecognizable, and how it can leave her with nothing even though she desperately wants everything. I cannot tell you how infuriating I found Genevieve, the novel’s protagonist. She makes every wrong choice possible, and cannot seem to see beyond herself at any time. And still, Wei crafts this character so well that you’re still able to harbor some empathy for her despite the unavoidable reality that she is her own worst enemy. I loved this almost claustrophobic novel about the ways unrealized ambition can turn everything someone holds dear to rot. I cannot put this damn book down.”
—Roxane Gay, New York Times bestselling author of Hunger
“From the very first page, The Original Daughter consumed me. I soared when Gen’s and Arin’s dreams came alive; I crashed when heartache wrenched them. With rare wisdom, Jemimah Wei examines the remains of our need to belong and be loved when we chase ambition above all else. Her writing is so incisive and visceral that I did not simply read The Original Daughter; I lived it. This astonishing debut is a tour de force that I’ll never forget.”
—Qian Julie Wang, New York Times bestselling author of Beautiful Country
“I laughed, I wept, I called my mom. Instantly and utterly enchanting, reading The Original Daughter felt analogous to being a child again, pushing off real life just so I could stay in the warmth of its pages a second longer. This story of a family and its struggle for freedom, intimacy, and survival asks not just what it means to love, but love well, especially in a world where our relationships can both bond and break us. Jemimah Wei chronicles the eviscerating experience of living under the fracture of modern society with devastating care. Seismic.”
—Jonathan Escoffery, Booker Prize nominee and bestselling author of If I Survive You
“A beautifully crafted exploration of family, identity, and the complexities of cultural expectations. Wei is a talented, indelible writer with much to offer to a world that is in desperate need of saving.”
—Morgan Talty, national bestselling author of Night of the Living Rez and Fire Exit
“Full of empathy and energy, THE ORIGINAL DAUGHTER is a portrait of individuals striving to define themselves in a country, and era, of intense change—the debut of a true literary talent.”
—Tash Aw, Booker Prize-nominated author of The Harmony Silk Factory, Map of the Invisible World, Five Star Billionaire and We, The Survivors
“I’ve rarely read such believable and compelling characters – I was captivated by them from the first page, and read in a fever, rooting for them even when they were messing up and hoping they would be able to keep finding their ways back to each other. The pressure and astronomically high stakes of Genevieve’s academic journey; the ambition and love and misguided efforts of their mother; the ties and knots of the sisters’ relationship – everything was so tenderly painted with such attention to the best kind of minutiae – much as I sometimes found it heartbreaking, I loved diving back into the rich, textured, sensory world of the book and being submerged in Genevieve’s conscious. Sometimes I think you can enjoy a book in the moment but find it hard to conjure up afterwards – The Original Daughter is right there, vivid and colourful, with these strong, complex characters who are so clear to me it feels exactly like I met them on a trip to Singapore – I know they will remain with me for such a long time.”
—Emily Itami, author of Fault Lines and Kakigori Summer
“A heartfelt and meticulously written paean to sisterhood, the complexities of family and growing up in Singapore. Jemimah Wei is a sparkling talent.”
—Sharlene Teo, author of Ponti
“Glorious. . . Revelatory. . . A tragic, haunting exercise in the limitations of not-quite unconditional love. . . First-time novelist Jemimah Wei poignantly, affectingly observes an extended family that sunders from dysfunction and betrayals in The Original Daughter.”
— Terry Hong, Shelf Awareness
“Wei’s novel glistens with often profound insights about the complicated relationship between a person’s identity and the dynamic forces of family and friendship. . . A moving debut novel about sisterhood, ambition, and the quest to become one’s true self.”
— Kirkus Reviews
“Wei delivers an expertly paced and moving debut, a tragedy without over-the-top drama.”
— Booklist (Starred review)
