Biography-Tash Aw

Tash Aw was born in Taipei to Malaysian-Chinese parents and grew up in Kuala Lumpar. He moved to England at 18 to attend university, where he studied Law at Cambridge and Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia. He first began work on The Harmony Silk Factory (2005) in the evenings and at weekends until, in 2002, he left his job as a lawyer to work on the novel full time. It was finished a year later, nearly five years after Aw began the book. The Harmony Silk Factory won the 2005 Whitbread First Novel Award and a Commonwealth Writers Prize for Best First Novel, as well as being long-listed for the Man Booker Prize. Tash Aw is now a full time writer. His second novel Map of the Invisible World, set in post independence Malaysia and Indonesia, will be published in May 2009.

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Bibliography

The Harmony Silk Factory   Fourth Estate, 2005

Map of the Invisible World, May 2009

Prizes and awards

2005   Commonwealth Writers Prize (South East Asia and South Pacific Region, Best First Book)   The Harmony Silk Factory

2005   Whitbread First Novel Award   The Harmony Silk Factory

Visit Tash Aw's Website
Read an excerpt from The Harmony Silk Factory
Read Time magazine's review of The Harmony Silk Factory