From the author of The Harmony Silk Factory and Five Star Billionaire, a compelling depiction of a man’s act of violence, set against the backdrop of Asia in flux. Ah Hock is an ordinary man of simple means. Born and raised in a Malaysian fishing village, he favors stability above all, a preference at odds with his rapidly modernizing surroundings. So what brings him to kill a man? This question leads a young, privileged journalist to Ah Hock’s door. While the victim has been mourned and the killer has served time for the crime, Ah Hock's motive remains unclear, even to himself. His vivid confession unfurls over extensive interviews with the journalist, herself a local whose life has taken a very different course. The process forces both the speaker and his listener to reckon with systems of power, race, and class in a place where success is promised to all yet delivered only to its lucky heirs. An uncompromising portrait of an outsider navigating a society in transition, Tash Aw’s anti-nostalgic tale, We, the Survivors, holds its tension to the very end. In the wake of loss and destruction, hope is among the survivors.
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“[Aw’s] Asia is neither sentimental nor a stereotype…Aw is a precise stylist; with a few, lean images, he evokes a country on the cusp of change.”
— New York Times Book Review
“Ah Hock is an excellent protagonist…Aw is a beautiful writer who―this is rare―excels at switching beauty off, or dimming it almost to nothing.”
— NPR“[Aw’s] achievement is to make a global story personal…We, the Survivors] can’t easily be pushed out of mind.”
— The Guardian (London)Aw is a master storyteller.
— The GuardianA writer of great power and delicacy.
— The Daily MailA writer to watch.
— Dwight Garner, The New York Times[Aw] goes beyond the bounds of the ordinary...[he] provides a richly drawn landscape of compelling characters, and a deep immersion in their lives.
— All Things Considered, NPRBe the first to write a review about this audiobook!
Tash Aw is the author of Map of the Invisible World and The Harmony Silk Factory, which won the Whitbread First Novel Award and the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best First Novel and was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize. His other honors include the inaugural M Literary Residency Prize and an O. Henry Award. Tash lives in London.