Tash Aw

This novel juxtaposes three accounts of the life of an enigmatic man at a pivotal and haunting moment in Malaysian history. The author slices his first novel into three segments, wherein three characters dissect the nature of Johnny Lim, a controversial figure in 1940s Malaysia. Depending on the teller, Johnny was a Communist leader, an informer for the Japanese, a dangerous black-market trader, a working-class Chinese man too in awe of his aristocratic wife to have sex with her, or a loyal friend. Long after Johnny's death, we hear these conflicting accounts of his life.

Dreaming of love and success in rapidly changing Shanghai, four individuals--a starry-eyed waitress, a wealthy developer's son, a pop artist, and a poetry-loving activist--confront unexpected realities in regional challenges.

From the author of the internationally acclaimed, award-winning The Harmony Silk Factory comes an enthralling new novel that evokes an exotic yet turbulent and often frightening time and place. Map of the Invisible World is the masterly, psychologically rich tale of three lives indelibly marked by the past--their own and Indonesia's. Sixteen-year-old Adam is an orphan three times over. He and his brother, Johan, were abandoned by their mother as children; then Adam watched as Johan was adopted and taken away by a wealthy couple; and now Adam is hiding because Karl, the man who raised him--and who is Dutch but long ago turned his back on the country of his ancestors--has been arrested by soldiers during Sukarno's drive to purge 1960s Indonesia of its colonial past. All Adam has to guide him in his quest to find Karl are some old photos and letters, which send him to the colorful, dangerous capital, Jakarta, and to Margaret, an American whose own past is bound up with Karl's. Soon both have embarked on journeys of discovery that seem destined to turn tragic. Woven hauntingly into this page-turning story is the voice of Johan, who is living a seemingly carefree, privileged life in Malaysia, but one that is careening out of control as he struggles to forget his long-ago betrayal of his helpless, trusting brother. Map of the Invisible World confirms Tash Aw as one of the most exciting young voices on the international literary scene.From the Hardcover edition.

"The O. Henry Prize Stories 2015 gathers twenty of the best short stories of the year, selected from thousands published in literary magazines. The winning stories span the globe - from the glamorous Riviera to an Eastern European shtetl, from a Native American reservation to a tiny village in Thailand. But their characters are universally recognizable and utterly compelling, whether they are ex-pats in Africa, migrant workers crossing the Mexican border, Armenian immigrants on the rough streets of East Hollywood, or pioneers in nineteenth-century Idaho. Accompanying the stories are the editor's introduction, essays from the eminent jurors on their favorite stories, observations from the winning writers on what inspired them, and an extensive resource list of magazines"--