The Harmony Silk Factory

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The Harmony Silk Factory

Author: Tash Aw
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Publisher: Riverhead Hardcover
The Harmony Silk Factory is the textiles store run by Johnny Lim, a Chinese peasant living in rural Malay in the first half of the twentieth century. It 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.

Joseph Conrad, W. Somerset Maugham, and Anthony Burgess have shaped our perceptions of Malaysia. Now, with The Harmony Silk Factory, we have an authentic Malaysian voice that remaps this literary landscape. Through this examination of a compelling, mysterious, and larger-than-life character, Tash Aw gives us an exquisitely written look into another culture at a moment of crisis.

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Reviews

Barnes and Noble

Malaysia in the 1940s: part paradise, part Conradian heart of darkness. In a highly original first novel that sets a lush landscape at a historical crossroads, Tash Aw portrays three unique perspectives on the character and life of a highly enigmatic man. To his son, Johnny Lim is a traitor and a murderer; to his beautiful wife, he’s a man without a past; and to his best and only friend, he’s a fiercely magnetic confidant. Having fled his rural background as a young man, Johnny arrives in the Kinta Valley with little more than a new name and a burning desire to begin an odyssey that will make him the richest, most influential man in the region. As the years pass, some regard him as a hero—a Communist who fought against the Japanese, and a successful businessman who married the most desirable woman in the country. But others, including his son, suspect something much darker.

Defly weaving the three different narratives, Aw has created a masterful portrait of a disturbing and complex man that explores how little we really know about each other—even those to whom we are closest. Culturally and historically rich, with characters made real by their very frailty, The Harmony Silk Factory is an accomplished and provocative debut that does what only the best fiction can. It challenges readers with its scope and sagacity and moves them with its imagination and restraint. (Summer 2005 Selection)

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