I must admit that writing a story about a writer, albeit a critically-acclaimed one, felt rather daunting. Like any other conscientious student writer, I’d done my homework the night before. Thanks to the wonders of Google and online news archives, I knew beforehand that he had read law at Cambridge before coming to London to work in a law firm. I knew that he quit his job one day and took a one-year creative writing course at the University of East Anglia. I knew he was a Chinese-Malaysian, lived in Islington and I knew he had a banana tree in his garden.
The Harmony Silk Factory, described in one review as being ‘woven like fine silk’, was long listed for the 2005 Man Booker Prize and had won the 2005 Whitbread Book Award for Best First Novel earlier this month. Tash’s promising first novel tells the story of Johnny Lim, an infamous Chinaman – salesman, fraudster, possibly a murderer, through the eyes of his disaffected son Jasper, his deceased wife Snow and his flamboyant British friend Peter Wormwood. The novel is set during the 1930s and 40s, with undertones of a second world war and a Japanese occupation looming in the background.
Citing the 30s to be the heyday of British colonial rule and the 40s as the end of it, Tash felt that many novels written about that period were somewhat stereotyped and hackneyed. So he seeked to reinvent the South East Asian war novel. “I just wanted to take that period and do something different to it. Make it a bit of a thriller, a ghost story, a confession,” he says.
Tash is a big fan of seeing things from alternative vantage points. His book seems to lead you on predictably before making a swift change in direction when you least expect it. At the end of the story, you’ll be left to make up your own mind about what kind of man Johnny Lim really was.
“I’ve always liked places which don’t have immediate appeal, where you have to look slightly harder to find beauty,” he says. Painting the scene of his novel in Kinta Valley is proof of this personality trait. Located in the Western part of Malaysia, the former tin mining hot spot is hardly a famous tourist attraction these days and is not even well known among many Malaysians. In a self-written piece titled Shortbread, he confesses to having a love for things taken out of context such as a contemporary painting in a maiden aunt’s sitting room or a tin of shortbread biscuits (hence the title) in a Malaysian kitchen.
I ask about his curious garden –is it true about the banana tree? He sounds passionate when he tells me about the banana trees (one is really big while the other will soon catch up by the end of this summer), the stalks of bamboo and the palm which he wraps up in horticultural fleece during winter. “All winter I battle, ridiculously, to keep them alive, brushing snow off their leaves…even when the plants are being lashed by hailstorms I find it more exciting than alarming to see them clinging desperately to life,” he declares rather bizarrely in Shortbread.
Tash juggled his job in the City and his writing work simultaneously for four years. “It was good because it’s only then that you realise if that’s what you want to do. It was really, really tough, but it tests your resolve. Writing was what made me the happiest. It just felt the most important,” he says. He managed this dual lawyer-by-day-writer-by-night lifestyle with great difficulty and knew that at some point he would need to take some time off if he really wanted to finish his novel. So one day, Tash left his job and went back to school at the UEA. He planned to go back to law after a year and merely hoped that a small publisher would agree to print his book once it was done. As luck would have it, things turned out differently from what he had expected and he has stuck at his writer job till today.
“I didn’t think I would actually become a writer. I always wanted to be a writer,” he says, “but it was kind of like wanting to be a fireman..” During university, Tash was told that being a barister was the most obvious career choice, given his personality. “Over the years I’ve been given some spectacularly bad career advice…after reaching my age (he’s 33), I just think that anyone who knows me can tell that being a barister would be the worst thing possible for me.”
At another stage of his life it was suggested that he had the makings of a good accountant. “Even at that time, I could hardly add up. I’m really just stunningly bad at math. I think it wsas given on the basis of me being a Chinese and all Chinese are (supposedly) good at math…for anyone, it will take time to figure out what is the best job for you.”
The Harmony Silk Factory, described in one review as being ‘woven like fine silk’, was long listed for the 2005 Man Booker Prize and had won the 2005 Whitbread Book Award for Best First Novel earlier this month. Tash’s promising first novel tells the story of Johnny Lim, an infamous Chinaman – salesman, fraudster, possibly a murderer, through the eyes of his disaffected son Jasper, his deceased wife Snow and his flamboyant British friend Peter Wormwood. The novel is set during the 1930s and 40s, with undertones of a second world war and a Japanese occupation looming in the background.
Citing the 30s to be the heyday of British colonial rule and the 40s as the end of it, Tash felt that many novels written about that period were somewhat stereotyped and hackneyed. So he seeked to reinvent the South East Asian war novel. “I just wanted to take that period and do something different to it. Make it a bit of a thriller, a ghost story, a confession,” he says.
Tash is a big fan of seeing things from alternative vantage points. His book seems to lead you on predictably before making a swift change in direction when you least expect it. At the end of the story, you’ll be left to make up your own mind about what kind of man Johnny Lim really was.
“I’ve always liked places which don’t have immediate appeal, where you have to look slightly harder to find beauty,” he says. Painting the scene of his novel in Kinta Valley is proof of this personality trait. Located in the Western part of Malaysia, the former tin mining hot spot is hardly a famous tourist attraction these days and is not even well known among many Malaysians. In a self-written piece titled Shortbread, he confesses to having a love for things taken out of context such as a contemporary painting in a maiden aunt’s sitting room or a tin of shortbread biscuits (hence the title) in a Malaysian kitchen.
I ask about his curious garden –is it true about the banana tree? He sounds passionate when he tells me about the banana trees (one is really big while the other will soon catch up by the end of this summer), the stalks of bamboo and the palm which he wraps up in horticultural fleece during winter. “All winter I battle, ridiculously, to keep them alive, brushing snow off their leaves…even when the plants are being lashed by hailstorms I find it more exciting than alarming to see them clinging desperately to life,” he declares rather bizarrely in Shortbread.
Tash juggled his job in the City and his writing work simultaneously for four years. “It was good because it’s only then that you realise if that’s what you want to do. It was really, really tough, but it tests your resolve. Writing was what made me the happiest. It just felt the most important,” he says. He managed this dual lawyer-by-day-writer-by-night lifestyle with great difficulty and knew that at some point he would need to take some time off if he really wanted to finish his novel. So one day, Tash left his job and went back to school at the UEA. He planned to go back to law after a year and merely hoped that a small publisher would agree to print his book once it was done. As luck would have it, things turned out differently from what he had expected and he has stuck at his writer job till today.
“I didn’t think I would actually become a writer. I always wanted to be a writer,” he says, “but it was kind of like wanting to be a fireman..” During university, Tash was told that being a barister was the most obvious career choice, given his personality. “Over the years I’ve been given some spectacularly bad career advice…after reaching my age (he’s 33), I just think that anyone who knows me can tell that being a barister would be the worst thing possible for me.”
At another stage of his life it was suggested that he had the makings of a good accountant. “Even at that time, I could hardly add up. I’m really just stunningly bad at math. I think it wsas given on the basis of me being a Chinese and all Chinese are (supposedly) good at math…for anyone, it will take time to figure out what is the best job for you.”
He’s lived in the UK for about 15 years and admits that he stays mainly out of habit as he has gotten used to living in one of the most ‘expensive, frustrating, annoying and tiring cities in the world’. “I can’t imagine moving anywhere else…there’s just something about the mixture, the variety, the diversity and the size of London which a lot of people find very creative. And also since I’ve lived here for so long, all my friends are here…and home is where friends are.”
Having said all that, he claims to be extremely patriotic and proud of his roots. THSF is set in Kinta Valley partly because it was where he spent his chilldhood holidays. “Even if I live here (London) till my dying day…I’ll always say that I’m from Malaysia. That’s not the same as home is. Home is…where your friends are. And if all your support system is in London, I guess that’s what you have to say. But it doesn’t mean your roots lie elsewhere.”
Despite all the adoration which he’s been rained upon since he made it big, he is no stranger to accusations from those who question where his cultural allegiances lie. “One of the most annoying things people have said about me is that I’m a foreign writer exploiting my roots and I’m not really Malaysian anymore -that’s just stupid and wrong.” I note that he’s extremely cautious when it comes to threading around this form of critism. As I leave the premises later on, I overhear him telling Heather (his accountant) about wanting to wear the baju Melayu, traditional formalwear for men in Malaysia, to the upcoming Whitbread Awards ceremony. He reveals some hesitation due to his reluctance of being pigeon-holed as yet another ‘token ethnic’.
Tash argues that the point about migration and immigration is never about the exploitation of roots. “You can’t get away from them, you can never forget them. You can move away physically, but emotionally and culturally -everything is still tied to those roots. And surely the fact that I write about them is because they’re so important to me.It’s not because I wanted to make a quick buck. If those were my intentions, I would have stayed in law,” he argues.
The 2005 Whitbread Book of the Year will be announced on the 24th of January. THSF is up against four other works for the £25,000 reward. Despite my pre-interview jitters, things actually turned out quite well. Tash’s easy-going and down to earth manner put my rattled nerves at ease. I’ve always thought that writers, along with anyone remotely involved in the arts or literary scene, would either be slightly kooky; too intellectual for plebeian comprehension; or in a worse-case scenario, raving mad. Think: Woody Allen, Salman Rushdie and George Galloway, in that order. Tash Aw was definitely very far from being the romanticised, tortured literary genius that I imagined him to be. Genius? Yes. Eccentric? Apart from his tropical garden, absolutely not.
Despite all the adoration which he’s been rained upon since he made it big, he is no stranger to accusations from those who question where his cultural allegiances lie. “One of the most annoying things people have said about me is that I’m a foreign writer exploiting my roots and I’m not really Malaysian anymore -that’s just stupid and wrong.” I note that he’s extremely cautious when it comes to threading around this form of critism. As I leave the premises later on, I overhear him telling Heather (his accountant) about wanting to wear the baju Melayu, traditional formalwear for men in Malaysia, to the upcoming Whitbread Awards ceremony. He reveals some hesitation due to his reluctance of being pigeon-holed as yet another ‘token ethnic’.
Tash argues that the point about migration and immigration is never about the exploitation of roots. “You can’t get away from them, you can never forget them. You can move away physically, but emotionally and culturally -everything is still tied to those roots. And surely the fact that I write about them is because they’re so important to me.It’s not because I wanted to make a quick buck. If those were my intentions, I would have stayed in law,” he argues.
The 2005 Whitbread Book of the Year will be announced on the 24th of January. THSF is up against four other works for the £25,000 reward. Despite my pre-interview jitters, things actually turned out quite well. Tash’s easy-going and down to earth manner put my rattled nerves at ease. I’ve always thought that writers, along with anyone remotely involved in the arts or literary scene, would either be slightly kooky; too intellectual for plebeian comprehension; or in a worse-case scenario, raving mad. Think: Woody Allen, Salman Rushdie and George Galloway, in that order. Tash Aw was definitely very far from being the romanticised, tortured literary genius that I imagined him to be. Genius? Yes. Eccentric? Apart from his tropical garden, absolutely not.
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