Ceritalah | Malaysia’s antithesis to Crazy Rich Asians: Tash Aw’s ‘We, The Survivors’
- The prize-winning Malaysian novelist is sophisticated and well travelled, but his writing only really comes alive when it’s about his home and its people
- Weaknesses aside, his must-read new book examines the grubby, corrupt and polluted terrain of the country
And yet Tash’s writing only really comes alive – crackling with verve and shot through with a combination of both poignance and menace – when he turns his attention to the gritty, working-class milieu of his extended family back home in Malaysia.
His new novel We, The Survivors is a story about a murder. But because we know who’s responsible from the get-go, it becomes an exploration of context. And as Tash ranges through small-town Malaysia, he conveys its hopelessness, brutality and occasional gentleness with a deft and economic manner. For Tash, most people would do anything to flee the restrictive confines and limited opportunities of that world.
The central character, Ah Hock, is an everyman figure. Unremarkable and with limited talents – save a capacity for hard work and an open heart – he grows up in a broken home on the edge of a fishing village.
These quiet domestic scenes anchor the novel. They are tender, raw and heartbreaking. In short: superb literature. Tash captures the liminal and uncertain quality of his character’s lives with devastating effect.
Meanwhile, his wife is left alone to fend for herself and her young son. Desperately lonely, she moves in with a local bachelor, only to be ostracised by the village.