The Harmony Silk Factory - Softcover

Aw, Tash

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0007204515 ISBN 13: 9780007204519

Publisher: Fourth Estate, 2005

Synopsis

A landmark work of fiction from one of Britain’s most exciting new writers: The Harmony Silk Factory is a devastating love story set against the turmoil of mid-twentieth century Malaysia.

Set in Malaysia in the 1930s and 40s, with the rumbling of the Second World War in the background and the Japanese about to invade, The Harmony Silk Factory is the story of four people: Johnny, an infamous Chinaman – a salesman, a fraudster, possibly a murderer – whose shop house, The Harmony Silk Factory, he uses as a front for his illegal businesses; Snow Soong, the beautiful daughter of one of the Kinta Valley’s most prominent families, who dies giving birth to one of the novel’s narrators; Kunichika, a Japanese officer who loves Snow too; and an Englishman, Peter Wormwood, who went to Malaysia like many English but never came back, who also loved Snow to the end of his life. A journey the four of them take into the jungle has a devastating effect on all of them, and brilliantly exposes the cultural tensions of the era.

Haunting, highly original, The Harmony Silk Factory is suspenseful to the last page.

About this title

About the Author

Tash Aw was born in Taipei, in the Republic of China, and brought up in Malaysia. He moved to England in his teens and now lives in London. He is the author of The Harmony Silk Factory, which was the winner of the Whitbread First Novel Award and the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best First Novel and was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize, and Map of the Invisible World. His most recent novel, Five Star Billionaire, was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2013.

Edition details

• Publisher: Fourth Estate
• Publication date: 2005
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0007204515
• ISBN 13: 9780007204519
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 384