Review | Book review: Tash Aw’s lyrical memoir on immigration and fitting in
The Malaysian-Chinese writer covers a lot of ground in Strangers on a Pier, a short and pithy book, part of a series called The Face, which will resonate with multicultural Asians but has a universal appeal
by Tash Aw
Restless Books
4/5 stars
Short books are, apparently, the next big thing. The bestselling novelist James Patterson has announced that he will be releasing a series of short works designed to be “read in a single sitting”. Columbia Global Reports, an imprint of Columbia University Press, has launched novella-length long-form journalism.
Now Restless Books has launched The Face, a new series of short memoirs by such writers as Tash Aw and Ruth Ozeki. The one by Tash Aw, Strangers on a Pier, can’t be much longer than 10,000 words: not only can it be read in a single sitting, the sitting needn’t be very long, even judged by the brief attention spans of our age.