'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 *