Tash Aw, whose full name is Aw Ta-Shi (; born 4 October 1971)Biography: Tash Aw, Berlin Literary Festival, 2007
/ref> is a

Malaysia Malaysia ( ; ) is a country in Southeast Asia. The federation, federal constitutional monarchy consists of States and federal territories of Malaysia, thirteen states and three federal territories, separated by the South China Sea into two r ...

n writer living in London.

Biography

Born in 1971 in

Taipei Taipei (), officially Taipei City, is the capital and a special municipality of the Republic of China (Taiwan). Located in Northern Taiwan, Taipei City is an enclave of the municipality of New Taipei City that sits about southwest of the ...

Taiwan Taiwan, officially the Republic of China (ROC), is a country in East Asia, at the junction of the East and South China Seas in the northwestern Pacific Ocean, with the People's Republic of China (PRC) to the northwest, Japan to the northe ...

, to Malaysian parents, Tash Aw returned to

Kuala Lumpur , anthem = ''Maju dan Sejahtera'' , image_map = , map_caption = , pushpin_map = Malaysia#Southeast Asia#Asia , pushpin_map_caption = , coordinates = , sub ...

, Malaysia, at the age of two, and grew up there.About Tash Aw
/ref> Like many Malaysians, he had a multilingual upbringing, speaking Chinese and Cantonese at home, and Malay and English at school. He eventually relocated to England to study law at

Jesus College, Cambridge Jesus College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. The college's full name is The College of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Saint John the Evangelist and the glorious Virgin Saint Radegund, near Cambridge. Its common name comes f ...

, and at the

University of Warwick , mottoeng = Mind moves matter , established = , type = Public research university , endowment = £7.0 million (2021) , budget = £698.2 million (202 ...

before moving to London to write. He completed the MA in creative writing at the

University of East Anglia The University of East Anglia (UEA) is a public research university in Norwich, England. Established in 1963 on a campus west of the city centre, the university has four faculties and 26 schools of study. The annual income of the institution f ...

in 2003. His first novel, '' The Harmony Silk Factory'', was published in 2005. It was longlisted for the 2005

Man Booker Prize The Booker Prize, formerly known as the Booker Prize for Fiction (1969–2001) and the Man Booker Prize (2002–2019), is a literary prize awarded each year for the best novel written in English and published in the United Kingdom or Ireland. ...

and won the 2005

Whitbread Book Awards The Costa Book Awards were a set of annual literary awards recognising English-language books by writers based in UK and Ireland. Originally named the Whitbread Book Awards from 1971 to 2005 after its first sponsor, the Whitbread company, then ...

First 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 2007 International Impac Dublin Award and the Guardian First Book Prize. It has thus far been translated into twenty languages. Aw cites his literary influences as

James Baldwin James Arthur Baldwin (August 2, 1924 – December 1, 1987) was an American writer. He garnered acclaim across various media, including essays, novels, plays, and poems. His first novel, '' Go Tell It on the Mountain'', was published in 1953; ...

Toni Morrison Chloe Anthony Wofford Morrison (born Chloe Ardelia Wofford; February 18, 1931 – August 5, 2019), known as Toni Morrison, was an American novelist. Her first novel, '' The Bluest Eye'', was published in 1970. The critically acclaimed '' S ...

Marguerite Duras Marguerite Germaine Marie Donnadieu (, 4 April 1914 – 3 March 1996), known as Marguerite Duras (), was a French novelist, playwright, screenwriter, essayist, and experimental filmmaker. Her script for the film '' Hiroshima mon amour'' (1959) e ...

William Faulkner William Cuthbert Faulkner (; September 25, 1897 – July 6, 1962) was an American writer known for his novels and short stories set in the fictional Yoknapatawpha County, based on Lafayette County, Mississippi, where Faulkner spent most ...

and

Albert Camus Albert Camus ( , ; ; 7 November 1913 – 4 January 1960) was a French philosopher, author, dramatist, and journalist. He was awarded the 1957 Nobel Prize in Literature The 1957 Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded the French writer Alb ...

. His second novel, titled ''

Map of the Invisible World ''Map of the Invisible World'' is the second novel by Tash Aw and was released in 2009. It is about two brothers, Adam and Johan, who were abandoned by their mother as children, and later separated when they were adopted by different families in ...

'', was published in May 2009. ''

Time Time is the continued sequence of existence and events that occurs in an apparently irreversible succession from the past, through the present, into the future. It is a component quantity of various measurements used to sequence events, t ...

'' magazine called it "a complex, gripping drama of private relationships," and praised "Aw's matchless descriptive prose", "immense intelligence and empathy." His 2013 novel '' Five Star Billionaire'' was longlisted for the 2013 Man Booker Prize. In 2016, he published '' The Face: Strangers on a Pier'', a memoir on immigration through the experience of his Chinese-Malaysian family, which was a finalist for the ''Los Angeles Times'' Book Prize. His novel, ''We, The Survivors'', published in 2019, was also a finalist for the

Los Angeles Times Book Prize Since 1980, the ''Los Angeles Times'' has awarded a set of annual book prizes. The Prizes currently have nine categories: biography, current interest, fiction, first fiction (the Art Seidenbaum Award added in 1991), history, mystery/thriller ...

. His novels have been translated into 23 languages.

Miscellaneous

Based on royalties as well as prizes, Aw is the most successful Malaysian writer of recent years. Following the announcement of the Booker longlist, the Whitbread Award and his Commonwealth Writers' Prize award, he became a celebrity in Malaysia and Singapore. He was a juror for the 2014

O. Henry Award The O. Henry Award is an annual American award given to short stories of exceptional merit. The award is named after the American short-story writer O. Henry. The ''PEN/O. Henry Prize Stories'' is an annual collection of the year's twenty best ...

, identifying

Mark Haddon Mark Haddon (born 28 October 1962) is an English novelist, best known for '' The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time'' (2003). He won the Whitbread Award, the Dolly Gray Children's Literature Award, Guardian Prize, and a Commonwealth W ...

's "The Gun" as his favourite story of the year's selection. In January 2018, his ''alma mater'', the

University of Warwick , mottoeng = Mind moves matter , established = , type = Public research university , endowment = £7.0 million (2021) , budget = £698.2 million (202 ...

, awarded him an honorary Doctor of Letters degree. He has been a visiting professor at

Columbia University Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manha ...

and was the 2018/19 Judith Ginsberg Fellow at the Institute of Ideas & Imagination in Paris.

Works

Novels

* '' The Harmony Silk Factory'' (2005) * ''

'' (2009) * '' Five Star Billionaire'' (2013) * ''We, The Survivors'' (2019)

Short Stories

* "Notes from a Desert Sketchbook", ''Off the Edge'', Issue 07 (2005) - ''Off the Edge'' was 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 in ''The O. Henry Prize Stories 2013'', Laura Furman (ed.) * "Tian Huaiyi", ''McSweeney's'' 42 (December 2012) * "Tiger" (January 2013)

Nonfiction

*''The Face: Strangers On A Pier'' (2016)

Essays

*
Look East, Look To The Future
, ''Granta.com'', 25 May 2012 *
My Hero, Rudy Hartono
, ''The Guardian'', 9 August 2013 *
You Need To Look Away: Visions of Contemporary Malaysia
, ''The Weeklings'', 4 April 2014 *
Heart and Soul in Every Stitch
, ''Granta.com'', 16 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 from ''The New York Times''
''nytimes.com'', 2014-

As editor

* ''X-24: Unclassified'' (2007) (co-editor with

Nii Parkes Nii Ayikwei Parkes (; born 1 April 1974), born in the United Kingdom to parents from Ghana, where he was raised, is a performance poet, writer, publisher and sociocultural commentator. He is one of 39 writers aged under 40 from sub-Saharan Africa ...

)

References

External links

Official website

The Guardian, interview 2019

We, the Survivors, The Guardian, 2019, review by John Burnside

We, the Survivors, Times Literary Supplement, 2019, review by Francesca Wade
The first chapter of The Harmony Silk Factory
in PDF file
Biography from the international literature festival berlin

Cover Story: Tash for Cash
in TheEdgeDaily.com
Whitbread Book Awards

The man behind the author
an interview on a Malaysian website
2013 interview
in ''The New York Times''
Staying true to his beliefs

Electric Lit, interview with YZ Chin, 2019

The Believer Magazine, in conversation with Chia-Chia Lin, 2019 {{DEFAULTSORT:Aw, Tash 1971 births Living people Malaysian novelists Malaysian writers Malaysian male writers Costa Book Award winners Alumni of Jesus College, Cambridge Alumni of the University of Warwick Alumni of the University of East Anglia English people of Chinese descent Malaysian people of Chinese descent Malaysian emigrants to the United Kingdom People from Kuala Lumpur Writers from Taipei Writers from London 21st-century Malaysian people 21st-century novelists 21st-century male writers