How We Disappeared

Reviews / Votes

'Deeply affecting.' * Financial Times * 'A sweeping epic and...an essential read... It's incredibly beautifully written.' * Sharlene Teo, author of Ponti * 'A heartbreaking but hopeful story about memory, trauma and ultimately love.' * New York Times * 'This heartbreaking story explores shame and secrecy through two timelines, woven together in this deeply moving novel. A quite extraordinary book.' * Kirsty Wark, BBC Talking Books * 'Fascinating, horrifying, powerful, and quite beautifully told.' * Irish Examiner * 'A powerful tale of wartime Singapore and the shame of silence...haunting... Read it and weep, read it and marvel, but above all, read it.' * South China Morning Post * 'Culturally authentic...the writing has grace.' * Sunday Times * 'The brilliance of the writing makes it harder to bear. It's powerful and profound.' * Irish Independent * 'A haunting and vivid account of Singapore's fall...beautifully crafted... A writer to watch from a fascinating part of Asia where great civilisations meet.' * Prospect * 'Compelling... a visceral yet tender exploration of truth and its consequences, and the redemptive power of memory.' * Irish Times * 'A beautifully written, suspenseful story of redemption and healing.' * Booklist (Starred Review) * 'An elegiac and at times extremely harrowing novel... How We Disappeared bears unflinching testimony to war crimes that are still on the brink of living memory.' * The Straits Times, Singapore * 'A beautifully controlled novel that tells an utterly compelling and important story. Jing-Jing Lee's prose is crystal clear, the narrative scope is sweeping and devastating, and the story is as deeply felt and well observed as it is captivating.' * Caoilinn Hughes, author of Orchid & the Wasp * 'Lee's harrowing novel ventures into one of Singapore's darkest periods... This novel bears unflinching, vital testimony to war crimes and those who have fallen through the cracks of history.' * The Straits Times, Best Books of 2019 * 'This novel unflinchingly examines the horrific acts carried out in Singapore during the Second World War, but manages to be hopeful and uplifting, too.' * Sunday Express * 'Raises poignant questions regarding multi-generational trauma, accelerated modernization, and changing identity... Lee vibrantly describes life in pre-occupation Singapore, managing to cinch both the particularity and the universality of oppression.' * Singapore Unbound * 'Jing-Jing Lee writes like a poet... This was a hard story to tell, to hear and to read, but it is also an important story which demands to exist and Jing-Jing Lee has brought it to life... Congratulations. Every single hour I spent reading this was an hour which could not have been better spent.' * Catherine Chanter, author of The Well * 'Heartbreaking and meticulously researched, this novel is a meditation on the legacy of violence.' * Book Riot * 'A heartbreaking story told with such humanity and grace. The details of How We Disappeared are so vivid they return to me in dreams.' * Marti Leimbach, bestselling author of Dying Young and Daniel Isn't Talking * 'A shattering, tender and absorbing novel... Meticulously researched, exquisitely written, with characters that will live and breathe in your heart long after you finish the last page... I'm reeling from its power-what an absolute triumph.' * Fiona Mitchell, author of The Maid's Room * 'The dazzling storytelling illuminates the brutalities of life in Japanese-occupied Singapore... Haunting, harrowing, sweeping and compelling, this is a courageous story of survival, memory, and how we deal with trauma.' * LoveReading * 'How We Disappeared is a masterpiece of storytelling. Evocative and heart rending, it tells of one woman's survival in occupied Singapore, and the quest of a child to solve a family mystery. It is beautifully written, exquisitely crafted, and utterly compelling.' * Mary Chamberlain, author of The Dressmaker of Dachau and The Hidden * 'Based on true events, which Lee gives a dignified voice to. Deeply affecting.' * Australian Women's Weekly * 'This is a brilliant, heartbreaking story with an unforgettable image of how women were silenced and disappeared by both war and culture.' * Xinran, author of The Good Women of China * 'How We Disappeared is a remarkable, original novel that uncovers the long-silenced atrocities that the 'comfort women' in Singapore suffered at the hands of the Japanese during WWII. Through gorgeous prose, tremendous pathos, and even humor, Jing-Jing Lee portrays the intersection of past and present and the courage to bear witness. How We Disappeared is an important, spell-binding debut." * Spencer Wise, author of The Emperor of Shoes * 'An exquisite mystery, an enthralling novel. Equally touching and intriguing, How We Disappeared is a soaring debut of surviving the unsurvivable [and] a searing and shocking reminder of a history many would like to forget, and of the endurance of the human spirit.' * Eoin Dempsey, author of White Rose, Black Forest * 'Jing-Jing Lee's novel is a testament to...strength in the face of profound cruelty.' * OUTinPerth * 'Memory and forgetting are at the heart of How We Disappeared... Lee's novel shines a light into the darkest chapter of Singapore's history.' * SA Weekend * 'A powerful and confronting story... How We Disappeared puts a blowtorch to our emotions.' * Qantas magazine, Travel Insider * 'A story of survival and endurance in Japanese-occupied Singapore.' * Deccan Herald *