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A landmark work of fiction from one of Britain's most exciting new writers: `The Harmony Silk Factory' is a devastating love story set against the turmoil of mid-twentieth-century Malaysia.
Set in Malaysia in the 1930s and 40s, with the rumbling of the Second World War in the background and the Japanese about to invade, `The Harmony Silk Factory' is the story of four people: Johnny, an infamous Chinaman - a salesman, a fraudster, possibly a murderer - whose shop house, The Harmony Silk Factory, he uses as a front for his illegal businesses; Snow Soong, the beautiful daughter of one of the Kinta Valley's most prominent families, who dies giving birth to one of the novel's narrators; Kunichika, a Japanese officer who loves Snow too; and an Englishman, Peter Wormwood, who went to Malaysia like many English but never came back, who also loved Snow to the end of his life. A journey the four of them take into the jungle has a devastating effect on all of them, and brilliantly exposes the cultural tensions of the era.
Haunting, highly original, `The Harmony Silk Factory' is suspenseful to the last page.
PRODUCT INFORMATION
A landmark work of fiction from one of Britain's most exciting new writers: `The Harmony Silk Factory' is a devastating love story set against the turmoil of mid-twentieth-century Malaysia.
Set in Malaysia in the 1930s and 40s, with the rumbling of the Second World War in the background and the Japanese about to invade, `The Harmony Silk Factory' is the story of four people: Johnny, an infamous Chinaman - a salesman, a fraudster, possibly a murderer - whose shop house, The Harmony Silk Factory, he uses as a front for his illegal businesses; Snow Soong, the beautiful daughter of one of the Kinta Valley's most prominent families, who dies giving birth to one of the novel's narrators; Kunichika, a Japanese officer who loves Snow too; and an Englishman, Peter Wormwood, who went to Malaysia like many English but never came back, who also loved Snow to the end of his life. A journey the four of them take into the jungle has a devastating effect on all of them, and brilliantly exposes the cultural tensions of the era.
Haunting, highly original, `The Harmony Silk Factory' is suspenseful to the last page.
Tash Aw is a recent graduate of UEA. He is Malaysian by birth but now lives in London. This is his first novel.