An intoxicating account of thwarted ambition, alienation and systemic inequality, We, the Survivors places a murderer’s testimony at the heart of a multilayered deconstruction of Malaysian society. Febrile and sinuous, this book confirms Tash Aw’s place at the heart of contemporary fiction.
A murderer's confession - devastating, unblinking, poignant, unforgettable - which reveals a story of class, education and the inescapable workings of destiny.
Ah Hock is an ordinary, uneducated man born in a Malaysian fishing village and now trying to make his way in a country that promises riches and security to everyone, but delivers them only to a chosen few.
With Asian society changing around him, like many he remains trapped in a world of poorly paid jobs that just about allow him to keep his head above water but ultimately lead him to murder a migrant worker from Bangladesh.
In the tradition of Camus and Houellebecq, Ah Hock's vivid and compelling description of the years building up to this appalling act of violence - told over several days to a local journalist whose life has taken a different course - is a portrait of an outsider like no other, an anti-nostalgic view of human life and the ravages of hope. It is the work of a writer at the peak of his powers.
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
ISBN: 9780008318543
Number of pages: 336
Weight: 540 g
Dimensions: 240 x 159 x 31 mm
Ah Hock is telling his life story to a writer and has just been released from prison for killing a migrant worker. It is almost an existentialist story of the identity of an uneducated man trying to find a life for... More
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Thanks to HarperCollins for the advance reading copy.
Tash Aw's debut novel The Harmony Silk Factory has rightly come to be regarded as one of the best first novels of the early 21st century, tracing ordinary...
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