How We Disappeared: A Novel

"How We Disappeared is a historical novel about the Japanese occupation of Singapore. It’s a sweeping epic and tells the tragic story of a young girl who gets taken as a comfort woman. This is an essential read. It’s a wonderful introduction to Singaporean literature and where Singaporean literature is headed. It’s incredibly beautifully written and very understated. It narrates a very painful and formative period of Singaporean history which doesn’t get talked about that much. There’s the whole social group of the comfort women. These are women that have been marginalised and not even acknowledged, historically, until fairly recently. It is a necessary narrative that people need to engage with more, about the costs of the war. That’s why, as a work of fiction, it’s a great introduction to Singapore, especially for readers who might not be aware of this period of time or these historical occurrences. They’re treated as traitors. It’s just terrible. It’s a horrible experience that has parallels throughout Asia. Women had to undergo this and it was deeply traumatic. I don’t think so. We are educated fairly comprehensively in school about the traumas of the Second World War. It also gets drummed into us by local television series. For example, Channel 8, the Chinese/Mandarin TV station, has quite a lot of war genre series. It’s something that growing up I was always aware of, but it’s positive that now books like How We Disappeared are reaching a wider audience outside of Singapore as well."