Book description
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. '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. Aw is a
skilled and sensitive writer' Daily Mail
'Absorbing … a rich, intense novel … 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 of nature are everywhere in this delicately drawn
novel' TLS Tash Aw is a recent graduate of UEA. He is Malaysian by
birth but now lives in London. This is his first novel.
