The Face: Strangers On A Pier

With his entry into Restless Book's The Face series, award-winning novelist Tash Aw explores the panoramic cultural vitality of modern Asia through his own complicated family story of migration and adaptation. From a taxi ride in present-day Bangkok, to eating Kentucky Fried Chicken in 1980s Kuala Lumpur, to his grandfathers' treacherous boat journeys to mainland China in the 1920s, Aw weaves together stories of insiders and outsiders, images from rural villages to megacity nightclubs and voices in a dizzying variety of languages, dialects and slangs. Tash Aw was born in Taiwan, grew up in Kuala Lumpur and currently lives in London. He is the author of The Harmony Silk Factory, which won the Whitbread Book Award and the Commonwealth Writers' Prize and of Map of the Invisible World. His most recent novel, Five Star Billionaire, was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize.