Tash Aw

(Taiwan, 1971) is a writer and essayist with Malaysian roots. His globally successful debut novel The Harmony Silk Factory was translated into more than twenty languages and won renowned literary prizes. His second book, Map of the Invisible World (2009) was also an instant international success. Both books deal with Asia's recent colonial past. The second novel is partly set in the turbulent 1960s in Indonesia; his characters make tangible the effects that political decisions can have on ordinary people. Subsequently, Aw published the novels Five Star Billionaire (2013) and We, the Survivors (2019), as well as the non-fiction book The Face: Strangers on a Pier (2016), in which he explores modern Asia through his own family story of migration and adaptation.