The Two T's

TAN TWAN ENG

Born in Penang in 1972, Tan studied law at the University of London, and later worked as an advocate and solicitor in one of Kuala Lumpur's law firms before becoming a full-time author of fiction. He has a first-dan ranking in aikido...

In my late teens I became obsessed with aikido. For a period of eleven or twelve years, I trained for hours almost every day, read up and watched everything on it -- books, manuals, instructional videos. Aikido's practical and philosophical aspects fascinated me. I went to classes even when I was ill or injured, of only to sit outside and watch, because I had been told that you can learn just as much by observing.

and lives in Cape Town:

I was working as a lawyer in Kuala Lumpur and I wanted to see the world, so I thought doing a master's degree in law justified that. My South African friends suggested a university in Cape Town. It's a beautiful and fascinating city. I travel between Cape Town and Malaysia regularly. I'm normally only in Cape Town during winter, which, coming from a tropical country, I enjoy. I go back to Malaysia every year and stay for long periods of time. Malaysia is "home".

The Gift of Rain, set in Penang during the World War II, was published and longlisted for the Man Booker Prize in 2007. It is about a certain Philip Hutton of Chinese-English heritage and his relationship with Endo-San, a Japanese diplomat who teaches him aikido. It tells a riveting and poignant tale about a young man caught in the tangled webs of wartime loyalties and deceits.

Tan's second novel, The Garden of Evening Mists, was published by the same publisher, Newcastle Upon Tyne: Myrmidon, in January 2012 and awarded the Man Asian Literary Prize (2012) and the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction. The story is concerning a newly retired Supreme Court judge, who was taken prisoner by the Japanese during World War II and later served as an apprentice to a Japanese gardener; trying to make sense of her life and experiences. The novel took place in three different time periods; the late 1980s, the early 1950s, and World War II as backdrop for the story.

• An interview with Tan Twan Eng
• For more information on Tan Twan Eng, visit here.

TASH AW

Born in Taipei, Taiwan in 1971 but raised up by Malaysian parents in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, Aw studied law at Jesus College, Cambridge at the tender age of eighteen, and the University of Warwick before settling down in London to write. After graduating, he worked as a lawyer for four years while writing his debut novel which he completed during the creative writing course at the University of East Anglia. Aw cited his literary influences as Joseph Conrad, Vladimir Nabokov, Anthony Burgess, William Faulkner and Gustave Flaubert.

Tash Aw is a private person with not much details being revealed about his personal life and character, so to know more about him, one can contact him through michelle.kane@harpercollins.co.uk OR anna@davidgodwinassociates.co.uk, and also follow up with his updates through his Twitter.

The Harmony Silk Factory (HarperPerennial) is the textiles store owned by Johnny Lim, a Chinese peasant living in rural Malay in the first half of the twentieth century. It juxtaposes three accounts of the life of an enigmatic man at a pivotal and haunting moment in Malaysian history; revealing the difficulty of knowing another human being, and how our assumptions about others also determine who we are. The novel was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize and won the Whitbread Book Awards First Novel Award as well as the Commonwealth Writers Prize for Best First novel (Asia Pacific region), all in 2005. It was also longlisted for the world's prestigious International Impac Dublin Award in 2007 and the Guardian First Book Prize.

Aw's second novel Map of the Invisible World (Spiegel & Grau) was released in May 2009 and narrated about two brothers, Adam and Johan, who were abandoned by their mother as children, and later separated when they were adopted by different families in Indonesia and Malaysia. A page-turning story, it follows the journey of two brothers and an American woman who are indelibly marked by the past—and swept up in the tides of history.

His latest novel entitled Five Star Billionaire, published by Fourth Estate in 2013, is actually a series of narratives covering the experiences of Malaysian migrants attempting to settle in China and begin a new life for themselves. It offers rare insight into the booming world of Shanghai, a city of elusive identities and ever-changing skylines, of grand ambitions and outsize dreams. It was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize for Fiction in 2013; Aw's first nomination.

Aw also wrote a few short stories:

• "To The City", Granta, 100 (Winter 2007)
• "Sail", A Public Space, Issue 13 (Summer 2011)
• "Tian Huaiyi", McSweeney's 42 (December 2012)

• A Conversation With: Novelist Tash Aw
• For more information on Tash Aw, visit here.