The Harmony Silk Factory. This item is unavailable.The Harmony Silk Factory

Running the area's most impressive Chinese silk factory in the Malaysian region throughout the first half of the twentieth century, admired war veteran Johnny Lim finds his life complicated by his son's belief that Johnny is a collaborator who uses the factory as a front for illegal businesses. A first novel. 50,000 first printing.

'A fine, strong, confident novel – and what a storyteller Tash Aw is. Unputdownable’
Doris Lessing

'The Harmony Silk Factory is an utterly remarkable debut. It's a dream of a novel, lovely and exquisite and intense, and reveals Tash Aw's already prodigious gift for storytelling; this young writer has come to us fully formed, and with the promise of a long and significant career.' Chang-rae Lee

'Bewitchingly written and gracefully assured ... The story Aw tells is mercilessly gripping and his prose is lucid, uncluttered, beautiful ... Aw orchestrates a graceful ballet of dissonances and congruences, of echoes and discords.' Neel Mukherjee, The Times

'Tash Aw's striking debut is as elusive as it is exotic. Beginning in playful and indeed almost picaresque mood, The Harmony Silk Factory evolves into a novel of quiet regret and long suppressed pain. Its three narrators speak with distinctive and compelling voices. Aw is a skilled and sensitive writer' Daily Mail

‘The strength of Tash Aw’s writing can be seen in the three narratives. Each voice is distinct and each offers a subtly different viewpoint, remaking the material afresh....The beauty and danger are everywhere in this delicately drawn novel.’ TLS