Jemimah Wei

Jemimah Wei is a Singaporean author and presenter.

She is a National Book Foundation 5 under 35 Honouree, William Van Dyke Short Story Prize winner, and was a Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford University and Felipe P.

De Alba Fellow at Columbia University.

Her highly anticipated debut novel, THE ORIGINAL DAUGHTER, is a Good Morning America Book Club pick, a New York Times Editors’ Pick, and an IndieNext pick.

It debuted at #1 on the Straits Times Bestseller list and has been named a best book of Spring 2025 by Harpers Bazaar, Elle, Vogue, Apple Books, and more.

A recipient of awards and fellowships from Singapore’s National Arts Council, Hemmingway House, Sewanee Writers’ Conference, Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, and Writers in Paradise, Jemimah’s writing has appeared in Joyland, Guernica, and Narrative, amongst others.

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THE ORIGINAL DAUGHTER

Country: Singapore

Publisner Name: WEIDENFELD & NICOLSON

Original Language: English

Singapore, 1996.

Before Arin, Genevieve Yang was an only child.

Living with her parents and grandmother in a single-room flat in Bedok, she is saddled with an unexpected sibling when Arin appears, the shameful legacy of a grandfather long believed to be dead.

At once collaborators and sisters, Gen and Arin grow up inseparable, navigating the intensity of life in working-class Singapore – where urgent insistence on achievement demands self-immolation in the realms of imagination, work, and play.

But as the rapidly modernising, winner-take-all world threatens to leave one behind as the other’s star rises exponentially, the sisters must weigh their allegiances and bonds, the cost of success and ultimately reckon with who they’ve become.

What results is a story that cracks open the fault lines of Singaporean society, our desperate need for acceptance and our yearning to be loved.

Vivid and visceral, The Original Daughter is a breathtaking act of empathy by a new literary star.