We, The Survivors: Tash Aw - Softcover

Aw, Tash

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0008318557 ISBN 13: 9780008318550

Publisher: Fourth Estate, 2019

Synopsis

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.

About this title

Review:

‘Tash Aw’s new novel succeeds in achieving many feats: it is at once the great novel on today’s racism that we have been waiting for; a masterly fresco of South-East Asia, a region of the world that remains under-represented in literature; and a magnificent story of the social ascent of a man born into poverty, his dreams of becoming someone else, his battles, his shattered hopes, and, finally his downfall – a sort of The Red and the Black of our times, radical and contemporary. We, The Survivors is one of the most beautiful and powerful books I’ve read in years’ Édouard Louis, author of Who Killed My Father

‘The ironically-titled We, the Survivors is the story of billions of human beings today―but not one reader. This is the tale of poor people―refugees, day laborers―whose lives are ruled by cruel circumstance and extreme poverty, whose struggles end in defeat, who are not meant to survive. What would be abstract in a report is here given burning, lacerated flesh. In the twenty-first century it is our Everyman, alas’ Edmund White, author of The Unpunished Vice

‘Utterly absorbing to the last word . . . with deep empathy combined with a sharp, unflinching gaze. As with [Aw’s] other books, we end up loving the characters we might otherwise hate, and arguing with those we might have a natural affinity for. He manages to turn our assumptions inside out, all while creating a world that would, without him, remain out of reach and invisible’ Tahmima Anam, author of A Golden Age

‘What a storyteller Tash Aw is’ Doris Lessing

'Aw is a writer of great power and delicacy, as able to conjure stampeding crowds as the glow of fireflies' Daily Mail

[Aw] is unmatched at evoking the smells and sounds of the land and cityscapes, the figures of speech and shifting cultural mores of that finger-like peninsula that pokes into the South China Sea’ Independent on Sunday

‘Aw is a master storyteller’ Aminatta Forna, Guardian

About the Author:

Tash Aw was born in Taipei to Malaysian parents. He grew up in Kuala Lumpur before moving to Britain to attend university. He is the author of three critically acclaimed novels – The Harmony Silk Factory (2005), which won the Whitbread First Novel Award and a regional Commonwealth Writers’ Prize; Map of the Invisible World (2009) and Five Star Billionaire (2013) – and a work of non-fiction, The Face: Strangers on a Pier (2016), finalist for the LA Times Book Prize. His novels have twice been longlisted for the MAN Booker prize and been translated into 23 languages.

His work has won an O. Henry Prize and been published in The New Yorker, the London Review of Books, A Public Space and the landmark Granta 100, amongst others. He is also a contributing opinion writer for the New York Times.

About this edition

• Publisher: Fourth Estate
• Publication date: 2019
• ISBN 10: 0008318557
• ISBN 13: 9780008318550
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 336