Tash Aw

Tash Aw is a Malaysian writer born in Taipei to Malaysian parents, who grew up in Kuala Lumpur before relocating to England. His debut novel The Harmony Silk Factory , published in 2005, won the Whitbread First Novel Award and the Commonwealth Writers Prize for Best First Novel, and was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize. Subsequent novels include Map of the Invisible World , published in 2009, Five Star Billionaire , published in 2013 and longlisted for the Man Booker Prize, and We, The Survivors , published in 2019 and a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. His most recent novel, The South , was longlisted for both the 2025 Booker Prize and the 2025 National Book Critics Circle Award. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, he has also held visiting professorships at Columbia University and fellowships in Paris and Berlin, and his novels have been translated into 23 languages. Aw studied law at Cambridge and Warwick before completing an MA in creative writing at the University of East Anglia.