We the Survivors: A Novel

From the author of The Harmony Silk Factory and Five Star Billionaire a compelling depiction of a man’s act of violence set against the backdrop of Asia in flux. Ah Hock is an ordinary man of simple means. Born and raised in a Malaysian fishing village he favors stability above all a preference at odds with his rapidly modernizing surroundings. So what brings him to kill a man? . This question leads a young privileged journalist to Ah Hock’s door. While the victim has been mourned and the killer has served time for the crime Ah Hocks motive remains unclear even to himself. His vivid confession unfurls over extensive interviews with the journalist herself a local whose life has taken a very different course. The process forces both the speaker and his listener to reckon with systems of power race and class in a place where success is promised to all yet delivered only to its lucky heirs. . An uncompromising portrait of an outsider navigating a society in transition Tash Aw’s anti-nostalgic tale We the Survivors holds its tension to the very end. In the wake of loss and destruction hope is among the survivors.