Tash Aw

Tash Aw
Born	Aw Ta-Shi (Chinese: Âu đại húc; pinyin: Ōu Dàxù) 4 October 1971 Taipei, Taiwan
Occupation	Novelist
Nationality	Malaysian
Education	MA in creative writing from the University of East Anglia
Alma mater	University of Warwick, Jesus College, Cambridge
Genre	Fiction
Notable works	The Harmony Silk Factory,Map of the Invisible World,Five Star Billionaire,We, The Survivors
Notable awards	Man Booker Prize (longlisted), Whitbread Book Awards First Novel Award, Commonwealth Writers Prize for Best First Novel (Asia Pacific region)

Tash AwFRSL,whose full name isAw Ta-Shi(Chinese:Âu đại húc;pinyin:Ōu Dàxù;Jyutping:Au1 Daai6 Juk1;Pe̍h-ōe-jī:Au Tāi-hiok;born 4 October 1971)is aMalaysianwriter living inLondon.

Biography

Born in 1971 inTaipei,Taiwan,toMalaysianparents, Tash Aw returned toKuala Lumpur,Malaysia,at the age of two, and grew up there.Like many Malaysians, he had a multilingual upbringing, speakingMandarin ChineseandCantoneseat home, andMalayandEnglishat school.He eventually relocated to England to study law atJesus College, Cambridge,and at theUniversity of Warwickbefore moving toLondonto write. He completed the MA in creative writing at theUniversity of East Angliain 2003.

Tash Aw talks about Map of the Invisible World on Bookbits radio.

His first novel,The Harmony Silk Factory,was published in 2005. It was longlisted for the 2005Man Booker Prizeand won the 2005Whitbread Book AwardsFirst Novel Award as well as the 2005 Commonwealth Writers Prize for Best First Novel (Asia Pacific region). It also made it to the long-list of the world's prestigious 2007International Impac Dublin Awardand the Guardian First Book Prize. It has thus far been translated into twenty languages. He cites his literary influences asJames Baldwin,Toni Morrison,Marguerite Duras,William FaulknerandAlbert Camus.

His second novel, titledMap of the Invisible World,was published in May 2009.Timemagazine called it "a complex, gripping drama of private relationships," and praised "Aw's matchless descriptive prose", "immense intelligence and empathy." His 2013 novelFive Star Billionairewas longlisted for the2013 Man Booker Prize.In 2016, he publishedThe Face: Strangers on a Pier,a memoir on immigration through the experience of his Chinese-Malaysian family, which was a finalist for theLos Angeles TimesBook Prize.His novel,We, The Survivors,published in 2019, was also a finalist for theLos Angeles Times Book Prize.His novels have been translated into 23 languages.

In 2023, Aw was elected a Fellow of theRoyal Society of Literature.

Miscellaneous

Aw is one of the most successful Malaysian writers of recent years.Following the announcement of the Booker longlist, the Whitbread Award and his Commonwealth Writers' Prize award in 2005, he became a household name in Malaysia and Singapore.

In January 2018, hisalma mater,theUniversity of Warwick,awarded him an honorary Doctor of Letters degree. He has been a visiting professor atColumbia Universityand was the 2018/19 Judith Ginsberg Fellow at theInstitute of Ideas & Imaginationin Paris. He is also aFellowof theDAAD Artists-in-Berlin Program

Works

Novels

• The Harmony Silk Factory(2005)
• Map of the Invisible World(2009)
• Five Star Billionaire(2013)
• We, The Survivors(2019)

Short stories

• "Notes from a Desert Sketchbook",Off the Edge,Issue 07 (2005) -Off the Edgewas a Malaysian English-language magazine, now defunct
• "The American Brick Problem",Prospect,Issue 122 (May 2006)
• "To The City",Granta,100 (Winter 2007)
• "Sail",A Public Space,Issue 13 (Summer 2011) - won the 2013 O. Henry Prize; republished inThe O. Henry Prize Stories 2013,Laura Furman (ed.)
• "Tian Huaiyi",McSweeney's42 (December 2012)
• "Tiger" (January 2013)

Nonfiction

• The Face: Strangers On A Pier(2016)

Essays

• "Writing into Silence"New York Review of Books May 13 2023
• "On Being French and Chinese"Granta 21 November 2019
• "Personal Histories"New York Review of Books May 11 2023
• "The People of the Village"London Review of Books, 16 February 2017
• "You Need To Look Away: Visions of Contemporary Malaysia",The Weeklings,4 April 2014
• "A Stranger at the Family Table",NewYorker.com,11 February 2016
• "Bridge to Nowhere",The Fabulist,Issue 16
• "Burgess and the Malay Novels",Burgess at 100,Episode 2
• "Living and Writing as a Divided Southeast-Asian: On Privilege, Unfairness, and Wanting More From Life",Literary Hub,10 September 2019
• Collected Op-Ed Articles fromThe New York Times,nytimes.com,2014-

As editor

• X-24: Unclassified(2007) (co-editor withNii Parkes)

External links

• Bio by Tahmima Anam for DAAD, 2024
• 2024 Biography from the international literature festival berlin
• Guardian Feature InterviewThe Guardian, interview 2019
• [1]We, the Survivors, The Guardian, 2019, review by John Burnside
• [2]We, the Survivors, Times Literary Supplement, 2019, review by Francesca Wade
• The first chapter of The Harmony Silk Factoryin PDF file
• Whitbread Book Awards
• The man behind the author,an interview on a Malaysian website
• 2013 interviewinThe New York Times
• Staying true to his beliefsArchived18 May 2008 at theWayback Machine
• Authenticity: Interview by YZ ChinElectric Lit, 2019
• [3]The Believer Magazine, in conversation with Chia-Chia Lin, 2019