Book Reviews

Book Reviews, Opinion, Raffles Reviews

Raffles Reads: We Are Not Free
Reading Time: 3 minutes

By Noh Sangeun (23S06Q)

Raffles Reads is a collaboration between Raffles Press and Times Reads which aims to promote a reading culture among Singaporean students.

Rating: 4/5

It’s official (or maybe it’s old news): the world population broke eight billion. Eight billion people have as many stories to tell, as this award-winning novel by Traci Chee about the displacement of Japanese-Americans during WWII makes abundantly clear.

We Are Not Free isn’t about the people on either side of the war. The plot follows a large group of friends who are forcibly removed from their Californian homes by government mandates and incarcerated in prison-like camps, on suspicion that they present danger to society.

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Book Reviews, Opinion, Raffles Reviews

Raffles Reads: This Place Is Still Beautiful
Reading Time: 4 minutes

By Venkatesan Ranjana (23A01D)

Raffles Reads is a collaboration between Raffles Press and Times Reads which aims to promote a reading culture among Singaporean students.

Rating: 3/5

A story about two sisters who struggle to understand each other is not  new; neither is a story about growing up in a place you love but do not belong in. The beauty of This Place Is Still Beautiful lies not in telling these age-old stories in yet another recycled form—it’s in the way XiXi Tian condenses these two archetypes, along with the central characters’ personal struggles, into a bittersweet narrative that moves the reader with its painful realism and hopeful undertones.

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Book Reviews, Opinion, Raffles Reviews

Raffles Reads: The Silence That Binds Us
Reading Time: 3 minutes

By Natalie Tan (23A01B) 

Raffles Reads is a collaboration between Raffles Press and Times Reads which aims to promote a reading culture among Singaporean students.

Rating: 3/5

Maybelline Chen, a high school student, is the resident disappointment of her Taiwanese American family. An introvert who prefers writing poetry to mathematics, she pales in comparison to her older brother Danny: well-liked, handsome, and most importantly, Princeton-bound. Yet shortly after he receives his admission offer, Danny commits suicide, leaving May and her parents reeling at the unexpected news.

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Book Reviews, Commentary, Raffles Reviews

Raffles Reads: Chronicles of a Village
Reading Time: 3 minutes

By Anamika Ragu (23A01A)


What is history to you?


To Nguyễn Thanh Hiền, it is a river of thought, ebbing and flowing through moments and deeply rooted in chronicling the world through the individual’s eyes. Chronicles of a Village opens with the charge of “sightless humans”, when our unnamed narrator’s village is ambushed and ravaged by colonisers. At first glance, then, this is a tragedy of a peaceful, faraway and tucked-away community interrupted by outward cruelty; a classic recount of injustice.

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Book Reviews, Opinion, Raffles Reviews

Raffles Reads: The Macanese Pro-Wrestler’s Cookbook
Reading Time: 4 minutes

By Natalie Tan (23A01B) 

Raffles Reads is a collaboration between Raffles Press and Times Reads which aims to promote a reading culture among Singaporean students.

Rating: 4/5

After his parents’ death, former pro-wrestler Zeke Oliveira returns to Macau from America and spends his days running their restaurant by the beach, purposeless but for cooking good food. 

When someone rigs Zeke’s best friend’s car to explode, killing him right outside his restaurant, Zeke throws himself headlong into hunting down his murderers through the alleyways and hotel rooms of the city, eventually stumbling upon an organ harvesting conspiracy that threatens both his life and his understanding of his own cultural identity.  

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