Search results for ""Author Tash Aw""

‘So wise and so well done. It made me wish it were much longer than it is’ Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie From the award-winning author of Five Star Billionaire and We, The Survivors comes a whirlwind personal history of modern Asia, as told through his Malaysian and Chinese heritage. If we are lucky we will find writing that grips us with its vitality, beauty and significance - Strangers on a Pier is like that’ Deborah Levy In Strangers on a Pier, acclaimed author Tash Aw explores the panoramic cultural vitality of modern Asia through his own complicated family story of migration and adaptation, which is reflected in his own face. From a taxi ride in present-day Bangkok, to eating Kentucky Fried Chicken in 1980s Kuala Lumpur, to his grandfathers' treacherous boat journeys to Malaysia from mainland China in the 1920s, Aw weaves together stories of insiders and outsiders, images from rural villages to megacity night clubs, and voices in a dizzying variety of languages, dialects, and slangs, to create an intricate and astoundingly vivid portrait of a place caught between the fast-approaching future and a past that won't let go.

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From the author of the internationally acclaimed, Whitbread Award-winning ‘The Harmony Silk Factory’ comes an enthralling new novel that evokes an exotic yet turbulent and often frightening world. Sixteen-year-old Adam is an orphan three times over. He and his older brother, Johan, were abandoned by their mother as children; he watched as Johan was adopted and taken away by a wealthy couple; and he had to hide when Karl, the Dutch man who raised him, was arrested by soldiers during Sukarno’s drive to purge 1960s Indonesia of its colonial past. Adam sets out on a quest to find Karl, but all he has to guide him are some old photos and letters, which send him to the colourful, dangerous capital, Jakarta. Johan, meanwhile, is living a seemingly carefree, privileged life in Malaysia, but is careening out of control, unable to forget the long-ago betrayal of his helpless, trusting brother. ‘Map of the Invisible World’ is a masterful novel, and confirms Tash Aw as one of the most exciting young writers at work today.

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Longlisted for the 2013 Man Booker Prize, the overlapping lives of five newcomers to China’s most dynamic city are the subject of this kaleidoscopic novel. Welcome to Shanghai. A restless metropolis where old traditions collide with new ambitions – a place where anything can happen and anyone can become Somebody. Golddigger, property magnate, pop star, entrepreneur and guru: five newcomers are lured by the promise of making fortunes and remaking identities. But they find their lives converging in unpredictable ways, as the Five Star Billionaire’s lessons for success wreak havoc. For in a land where dreams may come true, nothing is ever quite as it seems…

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A murderer’s confession – devastating, unblinking, poignant, unforgettable – which reveals a story of class, education and the inescapable workings of destiny. Ah Hock is an ordinary, uneducated man born in a Malaysian fishing village and now trying to make his way in a country that promises riches and security to everyone, but delivers them only to a chosen few. With Asian society changing around him, like many he remains trapped in a world of poorly paid jobs that just about allow him to keep his head above water but ultimately lead him to murder a migrant worker from Bangladesh. In the tradition of Camus and Houellebecq, Ah Hock’s vivid and compelling description of the years building up to this appalling act of violence – told over several days to a local journalist whose life has taken a different course – is a portrait of an outsider like no other, an anti-nostalgic view of human life and the ravages of hope. It is the work of a writer at the peak of his powers.

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A landmark work of fiction from one of Britain’s most exciting new writers: The Harmony Silk Factory is a devastating love story set against the turmoil of mid-twentieth century Malaysia. Set in Malaysia in the 1930s and 40s, with the rumbling of the Second World War in the background and the Japanese about to invade, The Harmony Silk Factory is the story of four people: Johnny, an infamous Chinaman – a salesman, a fraudster, possibly a murderer – whose shop house, The Harmony Silk Factory, he uses as a front for his illegal businesses; Snow Soong, the beautiful daughter of one of the Kinta Valley’s most prominent families, who dies giving birth to one of the novel’s narrators; Kunichika, a Japanese officer who loves Snow too; and an Englishman, Peter Wormwood, who went to Malaysia like many English but never came back, who also loved Snow to the end of his life. A journey the four of them take into the jungle has a devastating effect on all of them, and brilliantly exposes the cultural tensions of the era. Haunting, highly original, The Harmony Silk Factory is suspenseful to the last page.

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Édouard Louis is one of the most important literary voices of his generation' GuardianOne day, Édouard Louis finds a photograph of his mother from twenty years ago: a happy young woman, full of hopes and dreams. But growing up, Édouard only knew his mother's sadness - what happened in those years since the photo was taken? Then, at the age of forty-five, Édouard's mother frees herself from this life of oppression, to start a new one in Paris.A Woman's Battles and Transformations reckons with the cruel systems that govern our lives - and with the possibility of escape. It is a tender portrait of a mother, and an honouring of her self-discovery as she chooses to live on her own terms.'Tash Aw's sensitive translation captures the vividness of Louis's voice... Movingly, the book demonstrates the pain that moving from one social class to another entails' Times Literary Supplement 'A tenderness of observation' New York Times'Incandescent...Louis's most hopeful book to date' Los Angeles TimesTranslated from the French by Tash Aw

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