Thirty-three-old Singapore-born Jemimah Wei’s debut novel The Original Daughter, is a gripping tale of two sisters- one adopted- long separated by acts of cruelty and the inability to forgive. Set in Singapore and New Zealand, Wei’s story reflects the practice, probably old but discussed with less stigma these days, of going no-contact when close relationships feel too painful, too broken to fix.  Wei illuminates both the need for, and the cost of estrangement. As a character says after suffering a loss, “How various our excuses, as we flail about in our attempts to avoid facing the shame of wanting love”.

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. In the rapidly modernising, winner-takes-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.  When a stinging betrayal violently estranges Genevieve and Arin, Genevieve must weigh the value of ambition versus family love, home versus the outside world, and allegiance to herself versus allegiance to the people who made her who she is. This is the story of a family and its contention with the rolling changes of our rapidly modernising winner-take-all world. 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.

The original Daughter’s story is vivid, visceral and breath-taking act of empathy by  Wei.

The Original Daughter by Jemimah Wei, Weidenfeld &Nicolson £15.99, Doubleday Books $19.99, 368 pages.