Certainty

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Author: Madeleine Thien

Number of Pages: 320

Gail Lim, a producer of radio documentaries in present-day Vancouver, finds herself haunted by events in her parents’ past in war-torn Malaysia, a past which remains a mystery that fiercely grips her imagination. Gail’s father, Matthew, grew up under the terrifying shadow of war in Japanese occupied Sandakan where he witnessed his father being shot by the soldiers with whom he had collaborated. He and his friend Ani, a girl whose early bond with Matthew would endure for decades, wander along the Leila Road under the terrifying shadow of the war. Separated during the aftermath of the war, they are out of touch for years but meet again, once. The strong connection forged by their common memories and the secrets they shared creates an invisible tension, that, years later, Matthew’s wife, Clara, needs desperately to understand. Gail’s journey to unravel the mystery of her parents’ lives takes her to Amsterdam, which leads her closer to the truth about Ani and her father’s shared past. This story propels Gail to a deeper understanding about her own life and its complications. Vivid, profound and written in understated yet powerful prose, Certainty is a novel about the legacies of loss, the dislocations of war, the redemptive qualities of love and the evanescence of any kind of certainty.