Its smallness prohibits any sense of anonymity, so that there’s nowhere to hide from the shame of being a rape victim once you’ve confessed to having been a comfort woman for the Japanese soldiers. How We Disappeared will be told in dual layers from the past war years in Singapore and then into the present.

But she is not mistaking the regret she feels at not having allowed the Old One to tell her of his wartime experiences. Neither of them saying anything as she did what girl children were supposed to and laid out the cutlery. 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.It is only after his death that she feels the need to uncover the secret he had kept from her for decades.

They didn’t bother naming the girl for a few weeks, but when they did, they named her Wang Di – to hope for a brother. The women involved, invariably, would be a distant relation or a friend of a neighbour – someone conveniently removed from the interviewees’ own private sphere so that they can remain fairly untouched by the trauma and shame. My great-grandfather suffered a stab wound and the cries of his youngest child were the last sounds he heard before he passed out. This book follows the twelve-year-old Kevin's zealous journey to discern the truth about his grandmother Wang Di. As revenge, the army set upon a nearby village – the village where my great-grandfather lived with his wife and their children – two sons and a young daughter of about three years old.Fiction review: How We Disappeared by Jing-Jing Lee; Dublin Palms by Hugo Hamilton; Ash Before Oak by Jeremy Cooper". By her sheer temerity and unremitting nature, she was able to survive all the wanton acts in the camp.

In the year 2000, her mind is still haunted by her experiences there, but she has long been silent about her memories of that time.In 1942 seventeen year old Wang Di , daughter born to a working class family is taken from her home in Japanese occupied Singapore to become a “comfort woman”. Weaving together two time lines and two very big secrets, this stunning debut opens a window on a little-known period of history, revealing the strength and bravery shown by numerous women in the face of terrible cruelty. She could be watching the news or doing the wash when everything blurred in front of her eyes and she would be reminded of something that happened years ago. In the year 2000, twelve-year-old Kevin is sitting beside his ailing grandmother when he overhears a mumbled confession.