The Original Daughter: A Novel

A GOOD MORNING AMERICA BOOK CLUB PICK • LONGLISTED FOR THE DUBLIN LITERARY AWARD • ONE OF ELLE'S BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR

In this dazzling debut, Jemimah Wei explores the tumultuous nature of family bonds in a story of ambition and sisterhood in turn-of-the-millennium Singapore.

“Precise, layered and moving, The Original Daughter is a book not to miss.” –The New York Times Book Review

Before Arin, Genevieve Yang was an only child. Living with her parents and grandmother in a single-room flat inworking-class Singapore, Genevieve is saddled with an unexpected sibling when Arin appears as the shameful legacy of a grandfather long believed to be dead. As the girls grow closer, they must navigate the intensity of life in a brutally competitive place where insistence on achievement demands constant sacrifice. The sisters become inextricably bound as they spurn outside friendships, leisure, and any semblance of a social life in pursuit of academic perfection and passage to a better future.

When a stinging betrayal violently estranges the sisters, Genevieve must weigh the value of ambition versus familial love, home versus the outside world, and allegiance to herself versus allegiance to the people who made her who she is. In this story of a family and its contention with the roiling changes of our rapidly modernizing, winner-take-all world, The Original Daughter is a major work of modern literature, imbued with equal parts emotional clarity and searing social insight.