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Praise
About the Author

A dark, provocative novel set in a world on the verge of a health-induced breakdown, Suicide Club tells the terrifying but addictive story of a disillusioned lifer, a reckless activist group and the fight between the science and the art of living life to the fullest.

In a near-future world, medical technology has progressed far enough that immortality is now within grasp -but only to those who show themselves to be deserving of it. These people are the lifers: the exercisers, yogacisers, green juicers and early nighters.

Genetically perfect, healthy and wholesome, one hundred-year-old Lea is the poster girl for lifers, until the day she catches a glimpse of her father in the street, eighty-eight years after their last encounter. While pursuing him, Lea has a brush with death which sparks suspicions. If Lea could be so careless, is she worthy of immortality?

Suicide Club wasn't always an activist group. It began as a set of disillusioned lifers, gathering to indulge in forbidden activities: performances of live music, artery-clogging meals, irresponsible orgies. But now they have been branded terrorists and are hunted by the state.

And Lea has decided to give them a call.
"Fans of modern speculative fiction and readers who love stories that warn us to be careful what we wish for will be enthralled by Heng's highly imaginative debut, which deftly asks 'What does it really mean to be alive?"
—Library Journal (starred)

"This is a refreshingly original debut."
—Book Riot

"Clever, compelling, and wholly believable, this is a superb novel about our most basic desires."
—Net Galley (Book Of The Month)

"In a frighteningly plausible future, the economy revolves around the currency of health, life spans are potentially eternal, and the new have-nots are born with poverty encoded in their genes... Heng expertly threads a ribbon of dread through her glittering vistas and gleaming characters... A complicated and promising debut that spoofs the current health culture craze even as it anticipates its appalling culmination."
—Kirkus Reviews

"Suicide Club is an original and subversive exploration of health obsessions, consumptions, and what makes life worth living."
—The Independent

"Audacious... beautifully paced... How can such a young writer know all these things? Rachel Heng’s first novel is as keen as a sharpened blade. Suicide Club is on the money about where our current obsessions are leading us and yet she makes us care about her characters in deep and old-fashioned ways. It reminded me again and again of Orwell and Huxley. I have the feeling that this is the beginning of a long and illustrious career."
—James Magnuson, author of Famous Writers I Have Known

"I happily lost a whole weekend to Suicide Club. This life-affirming book about death lingers long after the last page. ‘Be careful what you wish for’ has never been so chilling, or so gripping."
—Erin Kelly, Sunday Times bestselling author of He Said/She Said

"Suicide Club bends genre with grace and artistry, delivering us to the outermost reaches of what's familiar and affirming what dares to still exist there: family, friendship, and forgiveness. With superb writing, Rachel Heng has crafted a world inside of a world gone mad, one where love faces its most difficult test. This is an exciting, bold, inventive novel."
—Kristen Iskandrian, author of Motherest

"The future is here. Let's welcome one of its stars. Talented and ferociously intelligent, Heng has produced a glittering debut."
—Joanna Briscoe, author of You

"In exquisitely crafted prose, Rachel Heng gives us a startling look at a version of the world that seems simultaneously wild and plausible. Heng is a bold new talent and a writer to watch."
—Liz Moore, author of Heft and The Unseen World
Rachel Heng was named one of The Independent's 'Emerging Authors To Look Out For in 2018', won Singapore Women’s Weekly’s Great Women of Our Time (Arts and Media) 2018 Award, Tatler’s Generation T Award “for leaders in the arts shaping Asia’s future”, and has been profiled by the BBC, The Evening Standard, The Telegraph, The Straits Times, Channel News Asia, Electric Literature, Library Journal and The Rumpus.

Rachel's short fiction has received a Pushcart Prize Special Mention and listed among Best American Short Stories’ Distinguished Stories, and has appeared in Best Small Fictions, Glimmer Train, McSweeney’s Quarterly, Best New Singaporean Short Stories, Kenyon Review and elsewhere. Her non-fiction has been listed among Best American Essays’ Notable Essays and has been published in Al Jazeera, The Telegraph, The Rumpus and elsewhere. She has received grants and fellowships from the Fine Arts Work Center, Sewanee Writers’ Conference, Vermont Studio Center, Hedgebrook, Kenyon Review Writers Workshop

Fiction

Suicide Club