Tash Aw

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Tash Aw
Tash Aw

Tash Aw, whose real name is Aw Ta-Shi (Simplified Chinese: 歐大旭; born 1973) is a writer living in London.

Contents

[edit] Biography

Born in Taipei, Taiwan, to Malaysian parents, he grew up in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia before moving to England in his teens. He studied law at Cambridge and Warwick and then moved to London to write. After graduating he worked at a number of jobs, including as a lawyer for four years whilst writing his debut novel, which he completed during the creative writing course at the University of East Anglia.

[edit] Works

His first novel, The Harmony Silk Factory, was published in 2005. After Malaysian journalists reported that he had been paid over £500,000 for the novel, The Star and The New Straits Times called him the "RM3.5 million man". The novel was longlisted for the 2005 Man Booker Prize and won the 2005 Whitbread Book Awards First Novel Award as well as the 2005 Commonwealth Writers Prize for Best First Novel (Asia Pacific region). It also made it to the long-list of the world's prestigious 2007 International Impac Dublin Award and the Guardian First Book Prize. It has thus far been translated into seventeen languages. Aw cites his literary influences as Joseph Conrad, Vladimir Nabokov, Anthony Burgess, William Faulkner and Gustav Flaubert.


He is currently working on his second novel, set in 1960s Malaysia, due for publication in 2008.

[edit] Miscellaneous

Based on royalties as well as prizes, Aw is the most successful Malaysian writer of recent years. Following the announcement of the Booker longlist and, subsequently, the Whitbread Award, he became a celebrity in Malaysia and Singapore, and is now one of the most respected literary figures in Southeast Asia.

[edit] External links

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