Map of the Invisible World by Tash Aw HarperCollins HK$221
Tash Aw's impressive second novel opens in 1964, Indonesia's Year of Living Dangerously, when President Sukarno was at the height, indeed the cliff edge, of his power. Map of the Invisible World draws us into the psychological landscapes of five complex individuals - a Dutch painter, an American scholar, two orphaned Sumatran boys and a Jakarta student - who struggle to assert themselves in a nation increasingly at war with itself.