Biography of Tash Aw and Tan Twan Eng and summmaries of their novels

Biography of Tash Aw


Tash Aw, whose full name is Aw Ta-Shi is a Malaysian writer living in London. He was born in Taipei,

 Taiwan, to Malaysian parents, he grew up in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia before moving to England to study law at Jesus College, Cambridge and at the University of 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.

His first novel, The Harmony Silk Factory, was published in 2005. He 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).

His second novel, titled Map of the Invisible World, was released in May 2009 whereas his 2013 novel "Five Star Billionaire" was longlisted for the 2013 Man Booker Prize.

 Short stories

   "To The City", Granta, 100 (Winter 2007)

   "Sail", A Public Space, Issue 13 (Summer 2011)

   "Tian Huaiyi", McSweeney's 42 (December 2012)

Essays

  "Look East, Look To The Future", Granta.com, May 25, 2012

  "My Hero, Rudy Hartono", The Guardian, August 9, 2013

Summaries of his novels

 The Harmony Silk Factory(2005)

"The Harmony Silk Factory is the textiles store run by Johnny Lim, a Chinese peasant living in a rural region of Malaya, a British colony in Southeast Asia in the first half of the twentieth century. The factory is the most impressive and truly amazing structure in the region, and to the inhabitants of the Kinta Valley Johnny Lim is a hero-a Communist who fought the Japanese when they invaded, ready to sacrifice his life for the welfare of his people. But to his son, Jasper, Johnny is a crook and a collaborator who betrayed the very people he pretended to serve, and the Harmony Silk Factory is merely a front for his father's illegal businesses. Centering on Johnny from three perspectives-those of his grown son; his wife, Snow, the most beautiful woman in the Kinta Valley (through her diary entries); and his best and only friend, an Englishman adrift named Peter Wormwood-the novel reveals the difficulty of knowing another human being, and how our assumptions about others also determine who we are. "

Map of the Invisible World( 2009)
 This is the second novel by Tash Aw was released in 2009. It is about two brothers, Adam and Johan, who were abandoned by their mother as children, and later separated when they were adopted by different families in Indonesia and Malaysia.

Five Star Billionaire(2013)

Five Star Billionaire depicts the Chinese dream in a snakes-and-ladders universe of opportunity and ruin, through the eyes of Chinese Malaysians – from tycoons to factory girls – trying their luck in the new China. For Aw, whose own ancestors made the reverse journey out of southern China to Malaya, and who moved to England as a student in the early 1990s, this novel is about the people he grew up with, and is his "most personal" book. 

Biography of Tan Twan Eng

 Tan Twan Eng is a Malaysian author of fiction born in Penang in 1972.Tan studied law at the University of London, and later worked as an advocate and solicitor in one of Kuala Lumpur's law firms before becoming a full-time writer.He has a first-dan ranking in aikido and lives in Cape Town.

Summaries of his novels

Gift of Rain( 2007)

Tan Twan Eng's first novel,  The Gift of Rain, published in 2007, was long-listed for the Man Booker Prize. It is set in Penang before and during the Japanese Occupation of Malaya in Second World War. The Gift of Rain has been translated into Italian, Spanish, Greek, Romanian, Czech, Serbian and French.

 It concerns Philip Hutton, of mixed Chinese-English heritage, and his relationship with Endo-San, a Japanese diplomat who teaches him aikido. As war looms and the Japanese invade, both Endo-San and Philip find themselves torn between their loyalty to each other and to their country and family respectively. Philip decides to assist the Japanese and Endo-San in administering the country in an attempt to keep his family safe, but wherever possible passes intelligence to the guerilla fighters of  Force 136 which include his best friend Kon.

The Garden of Evening Mists(2012)

The Garden of Evening Mists is the second novel by Malaysian novelist Tan Twan Eng, published in January 2012. The protagonist of the novel is the judge Yun Ling Teoh, who was a Japanese prisoner during Second World War, and later served as an apprentice of a Japanese gardener. As the story begins, she is trying to make sense of her life and experiences. The novel takes place during three different time periods: the late 1980s, when the main character writes down her story, the early 1950s, when the main action takes place, and Second World War, which provides the backdrop for the story.^[1]

Synopsis( further reading)

Newly retired Supreme Court Judge Yun Ling Teoh returns to theCameron Highlands of Malaya, where she spent a few months several years earlier. Oncoming aphasia is forcing her to deal with unsettled business from her youth while she is still able to remember. She starts writing her memoires, and agrees to meet with Japanese preofessor Yoshikawa Tatsuji. Tatsuji is interested in the life and works of artist Nakamura Aritomo, who used to be the gardener of the Japanese Emperor, but moved to this area to build his own garden.
During the Japanese Occupation of Malays, Yun Ling was in a Japanese civilian internment camp with her sister, Yun Hong. Yun Hong did not make it out alive, and after the war was over, Yun Ling decided to fulfil a promise made to her sister: to build a Japanese garden in their home in Kuala Lumpur. She travelled to the highlands to visit family friend Magnus Pretorius, an ex-patriate South African tea farmer who knew Aritomo. Aritomo refused to work for Yun Ling, but agreed to take her on as an apprentice, so she could later build her own garden. In spite of her resentment against the Japanese, she agreed to work for Aritomo, and later became his lover.
During the conversations with Tatsuji, it comes out that Aritomo was involved in a covert Japanese program during the war, to hide looted treasures from occupied territories. The rumours of this so-called "Golden Lily" program were widespread, and Magnus was killed trying to save his family from the Communist guerilla, who came looking for the gold. Aritomo never talked about the treasure to Yun Ling, but gradually it becomes clear that he might have left a clue to its location. Before he disappeared into the jungle, he made a horimono tattoo on her back. It now appears this tattoo might contain a map to the location of the treasure. Yun Ling decides that, before she dies, she must make sure that no-one will be able to get their hand on her body, and the map. In the meantime, she sets out to restore Aritomo's dilapidated garden.