Tash Aw

Tash Aw,  or his full name, Aw Tash Shi is the son of Malaysian parents, was born in the Taiwanese capital of Taipei in 1971. When he was two years old his family moved back to their native land. Aw grew up in Kuala Lumpur and was educated at a catholic school before moving to Britain with his family, where he studied law at Cambridge and Warwick. Upon graduation he settled in London where he took on various jobs before eventually working as a lawyer. At the same time he was writing short stories and embarked on his first novel. In 2002 he completed his degree at the School of Literature and Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia with his début novel and in 2005 “The Harmony Silk Factory” appeared.

The book is set in British-governed Malaysia in 1940, shortly before the Japanese invasion. In the first part a son tells the story of his father Johnny Lim, a two-timing cloth dealer and communist underground fighter who by dubious means worked his way out of the gutter and became the wealthiest man in the valley. His “harmony silk factory” was also used as the site of political resistance as well as a meeting place for smugglers and racketeers. He married the beautiful Snow Soong, who died while giving birth to their son. In the second part of the novel Soong narrates, in journal entries, their trip to the “Seven Maiden Islands” and sheds an entirely different light on her husband, who – boyish and aloof – is tormented by horrible dreams. The third shift in perspective unfolds by means of a report by Johnny Lim’s only friend, who portrays him in this last part in unexpected ways: this time as a cuckolded husband and loyal friend.

    

In the year 2005, Aw was nominated for the Booker Prize  and that same year was awarded both the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for the best first novel and the Whitbread First Novel Award. His work has since been translated into twenty languages.

He works for the BBC on a regular basis, commenting on literature, film and culture in Southeast Asia. The author is currently working on his second novel, set in Malaysia and Indonesia in the sixties. He lives in London.

Phoebe is a factory girl who has come to Shanghai with the promise of a job - but when she arrives she discovers that the job doesn't exist. Gary is a country boy turned pop star who is spinning out of control. Justin is in Shanghai to expand his family's real estate empire, only to find that he might not be up to the task. He has long harbored a crush on Yinghui, a poetry-loving, left-wing activist who has reinvented herself as a successful Shanghai businesswoman. Yinghui is about to make a deal with the shadowy Walter Chao, the five star billionaire of the novel, who with his secrets and his schemes has a hand in the lives of each of the characters. All bring their dreams and hopes to Shanghai, the shining symbol of the New China, which, like the novel's characters, is constantly in flux and which plays its own fateful role in the lives of its inhabitants.

This novel juxtaposes three accounts of the life of an enigmatic man at a pivotal and haunting moment in Malaysian history. The author slices his first novel into three segments, wherein three characters dissect the nature of Johnny Lim, a controversial figure in 1940s Malaysia. Depending on the teller, Johnny was a Communist leader, an informer for the Japanese, a dangerous black-market trader, a working-class Chinese man too in awe of his aristocratic wife to have sex with her, or a loyal friend. Long after Johnny's death, we hear these conflicting accounts of his life.

After 16-year-old Adam de Willigen's adoptive father, Karl, is arrested by Indonesian soldiers, stranding Adam in their remote island village, he sets off for Jakarta to find him. Meanwhile, American ex-pat professor Margaret Bates is reminded of her teenage love for Karl after an embassy contact informs her he's been arrested. Soon, Adam arrives on Margaret's doorstep, and though practical, good-natured Margaret has never felt any maternal longings, the two bond instantly. Their search for Karl continues amid the riots and protests filling the city streets, but is interrupted when Adam is kidnapped by a Communist student with a sinister agenda. With the help of a friend, Margaret uses every ounce of diplomacy she has to find Karl and Adam and construct the family she's discovered she's wanted all along.