Rachel Heng Embraces Contradiction
It’s clear that there will be no sophomore slump for Rachel Heng. Coming off the success of her 2018 debut novel Suicide Club, which has been translated into 10 languages and takes on contemporary health culture, The Great Reclamation is a novel that has inspired praise like “epic” and “saga” and their many iterations.
As Heng was born and raised in Singapore and has the keen eye of a historian, the book is both intimate and sweeping, lush in its descriptions of places and personalities, and clear-eyed in its depictions of Ah Boon, the book’s protagonist and a symbol of Singapore’s great change in the decades following World War II.
I spoke with Rachel about, among other topics, her research for the novel, ideas of change and progress in Singapore, the book’s complementary main characters, and the importance of her perspective in writing about such a heavy topic.
Pete Riehl: I want to ask you about the research that you did and some of
