Purchase
World Editions
June 2025
On Sale: June 3, 2025
Featuring: Siew Li
302 pages
ISBN: 1642861545
EAN: 9781642861549
Paperback
Add to Wish List
Fiction Literary
Siew Li leaves her husband and young children to fight for freedom in the jungles of Malaya. Decades later, a Malaysian journalist returns to her homeland to uncover the truth of a massacre committed during the Emergency, while Siew Li’s son uncovers the truth of his family’s past. Informed by years of painstaking research, 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. State of Emergency questions whether we can grasp the truth after the fact. And yet, in the very telling of its interlocking stories, it reaffirms the importance of trying.
| 
© 2003-2026