State of Emergency

By Jeremy Tiang

2017

First Published

4.11

Average Rating

259

Number of Pages

7H54M

Audio Length

Winner of the 2018 Singapore Literature Prize for Fiction Finalist for the 2016 Epigram Books Fiction Prize Siew Li leaves her husband and children in Tiong Bahru to fight for freedom in the jungles of Malaya. Years later, a Malaysian journalist returns to her homeland to uncover the truth of a massacre committed during the Emergency. And in Singapore, Siew Li's niece Stella finds herself accused of being a Marxist conspirator. Jeremy Tiang's debut novel dives into the tumultuous days of leftist movements and political detentions in Singapore and Malaysia. It follows an extended family from the 1940s to the present day as they navigate the choppy political currents of the region. What happens when the things that divide us also bind us together?

Avg Rating

4.11

Number of Ratings

626

5 STARS

32%

4 STARS

50%

3 STARS

16%

2 STARS

1 STARS

goodreads

Author

Jeremy Tiang

Author · 3 books

Jeremy Tiang is the author of State of Emergency (2017, finalist for the 2016 Epigram Books Fiction Prize) and It Never Rains on National Day (2015, shortlisted for the 2016 Singapore Literature Prize). He won the Golden Point Award for Fiction in 2009 for his story "Trondheim". He also writes and translates plays, including A Dream of Red Pavilions, The Last Days of Limehouse, A Son Soon by Xu Nuo, and Floating Bones by Quah Sy Ren and Han Lao Da. Tiang has translated more than ten books from the Chinese—including novels by Chan Ho-Kei, Zhang Yueran, Yeng Pway Ngon and Su Wei-chen—and has received an NEA Literary Translation Fellowship, a PEN/Heim Translation Grant, and a People’s Literature Award Mao-Tai Cup. He currently lives in Brooklyn.