In Singapore, three very different women--Dara, a workaholic lawyer from the UK; Amaka, a sharp-tongued banker from Nigeria; and Lillian, a pianist turned "trailing spouse" from the United States--find their lives inexplicably intertwined upon the arrival of a handsome and mysterious man from Geneva who brings their worlds crashing down.

"A sweeping novel set in Singapore during the years leading up to its independence from British colonial powers, about one young boy from a rural fishing family and the love story that will shape his life and complicate the fate of his larger community"--

"Singapore, 1942. As Japanese troops sweep down Malaysia and into Singapore, a village is ransacked, leaving only two survivors and one tiny child. In a neighboring village, seventeen-year-old Wang Di is strapped into the back of a troop carrier and shipped off to a Japanese military brothel where she is forced into sexual slavery as a 'comfort woman.' After sixty years of silence, what she saw and experienced still haunts her. In the year 2000, twelve-year-old...