Mapping the Invisible World with Tash Aw

This is an author I recently discovered. I am reviewing his latest book Map of the Invisible World, published in the United States on January 5. Lately, I have been reading books that take me to the 60s and 70s, and I always walk away from the experience a better...person...reader. No, a more informed individual. That aside, this new book has already been read in Europe and elsewhere for over a year, and there are mixed reviews, but I am excited about reading about a place I know little about.

The premise of Aw's writings (this is his second novel), seems interesting. In Map, for instance, he will take me to 1964 Indonesia, expose me to some aspects of Dutch colonialism as the novel takes a historical dive and bounces back in post-colonial turmoil. The book has been described with words like "exotic", "lyrical", "breathtaking", and in the words of the Toronto Star, the novel drops readers on the streets of Jakarta and "floods your senses with impending doom." And as my reading begins, I am sweetly greeted by the first sentence: "When it finally happened, there was no violence, hardly any drama."

Biography
© Andrew Whittuck


Tash Aw was born in Taiwan to Malaysian parents and grew up in Kuala Lumpar. He moved to England in his teens, and studied Law at the Universities of Cambridge and Warwick. He moved to London and undertook various jobs, including working as a lawyer for four years. He then studied Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia. His first novel, The Harmony Silk Factory (2005), won the 2005 Whitbread First Novel Award, and the Commonwealth Writers Prize (South East Asia and South Pacific Region Best First Book). It juxtaposes three accounts of the life of Johnny Lim, a Chinese peasant in rural Malay. His second novel is Map of the Invisible World (2009), set in Indonesia and Malaysia in the mid-1960s.

Review scheduled to appear in The San Franciso Book Review.