In this episode acclaimed novelist Tash Aw talks to TLC’s Aki Schilz about what it feels like to grow up between worlds, the emotional labour of translating the self, and the radical work of becoming within a canon that seems only to recognise itself as its own epicentre.
Tash Aw is the critically acclaimed author of five novels including We, the Survivors and Strangers on a Pier, both finalists for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. Born in Taiwan, raised in Malaysia and educated in England, Tash attended the University of East Anglia’s prestigious creative writing school after redirecting from studies in law at both Cambridge and Warwick universities. Known for his forensic mapping of the changes to his home region over the last 100 years, his writing style has earned him the title of ‘Malaysia’s Graham Greene’. Tash’s latest book, The South, is one of three of his novels which have been longlisted for the Booker Prize, and was also longlisted for the 2025 National Book Critics Circle Award. Adding to his accolades, Tash is also the winner of a Whitbread Award, a Commonwealth Writers’ Prize, and an O. Henry Prize. His fiction has been translated into twenty-three languages, and he also writes across short stories, non fiction, and essay. He is a Fellow of the DAAD Artists-in-Berlin Program, and of the Royal Society of Literature.