Certainty

On the anniversary of his wife Gail's unexpected death, Ansel comes together with friends and family to remember her. For Gail's father, Matthew, this gathering forces him to revisit a tragic but unspoken loss of his own: as a boy in Japanese-occupied Borneo, he was separated from his childhood love, Ani, when World War II brutally overwhelmed their country.

In Madeleine Thien's powerful debut novel, these two parallel stories of intense love and loss become intertwined as Ansel and Matthew struggle to accept the uncertain nature of the past, as well as the future.