This month is the paperback publication of Tash Aw's Map of the Invisible World. In the following interview with Sarah O' Reilly he talks about Malasia, mythology, and why he doesn't consider himself an ‘historical’ novelist...
You were born in Malaysia, and now live in London. Where is home for you and why?
Malaysia is still my point of reference; I compare everything to it – ways of living, thinking, being. It’s where my family still live, and the emotional ties that this creates are impossible to escape. When anything happens there – a natural disaster, for example, or political turmoil, I feel it keenly. But the physical reality is that I am in London more than I am in any other place. I travel a lot, often spending long periods in other countries – France, for example, or China – but London is where I own a flat, and property ownership really ties you to a place. London is a place where I have my books, a few mugs, a table and a couple of pictures; it’s where I pay taxes and do my washing. The boring daily things create a sense of home, I guess. And above all, London is full of people like me, who have come here from other places, so it’s easy to blend in.]]>
This month is the paperback publication of Tash Aw’s Map of the Invisible World. In the following interview with Sarah O’ Reilly he talks about Malasia, mythology, and why he doesn’t consider himself an ‘historical’ novelist…
You were born in Malaysia, and now live in London. Where is home for you and why?
Malaysia is still my point of reference; I compare everything to it – ways of living, thinking, being. It’s where my family still live, and the emotional ties that this creates are impossible to escape. When anything happens there – a natural disaster, for example, or political turmoil, I feel it keenly. But the physical reality is that I am in London more than I am in any other place. I travel a lot, often spending long periods in other countries – France, for example, or China – but London is where I own a flat, and property ownership really ties you to a place. London is a place where I have my books, a few mugs, a table and a couple of pictures; it’s where I pay taxes and do my washing. The boring daily things create a sense of home, I guess. And above all, London is full of people like me, who have come here from other places, so it’s easy to blend in.
What did you want to be when you grew up?
A musician or a vet.
What, or who, made you a novelist?
It’s impossible for most novelists to say how they chose their profession – mostly because one just falls into it. There wasn’t a writerly figure in my family or education, no defined source of inspiration. But I grew up in an environment where books and stories were valued, and, because we moved around a lot in my early years, there was always a sense that novels were constant, whereas one’s habitat wasn’t. Being a novelist is such a tenuous thing – there isn’t a career path, no progression to follow. One can only keep writing and hope that it continues for as long as possible.
Map of the Invisible World is your second novel to be set in Southeast Asia. Does living in England enable, or inhibit, your ability to write about the area?
Without doubt, living in England enables me to write more clearly about Southeast Asia. Different writers work in different ways, but I need a certain amount of physical separation from my subject before I am able to render it with clarity and objectivity.
Both of your novels have been set in the recent past. Would you describe yourself as an historical novelist?
I’m definitely not an ‘historical’ novelist. Part of what I try to do is to update the notion of the Southeast Asian novel and ideas of history. I think it’s unhelpful to see novels in terms of ‘history’ or ‘contemporary’ – everything depends on the treatment of a novel.
In my case, I’ve been drawn to Southeast Asia in times of great change and upheaval – I’m interested in our recent past, how we have come to be what we are now, and what we might become. The 1940s and 1960s – which straddle the process of Independence – were extremely traumatic times which set the tone for today’s politics and society, so they have a direct bearing on the way we live now. We’re still trying to work out what happened. So my work doesn’t involve a dusty costume drama – it’s about looking at the way Southeast Asia has changed and is changing.
You’ve said that the character of Margaret is based upon Judith Sihombing. Can you tell me about her and how you came to know each other? And is Margaret’s example typical of the way in which you find or create your characters?
Margaret isn’t based on Judith as such, though the stories that Judith told me about her life in Jakarta in the 60s helped form the idea of a character like Margaret. I’ve known Judith for years because she’s the mother of one of my best friends, but I hadn’t known about her times in Indonesia in the 60s until I came to write Map of the Invisible World. This really isn’t typical of the way I write characters – I don’t like characters who are cardboard cutouts of real people, and the challenge for me was to use Judith’s inspirational stories to create a convincing character who wasn’t her.
Din wants to write a ‘secret history’ of the Indonesian islands east of Bali, a ‘lost world where everything remained true and authentic, away from the gaze of foreigners’. What sort of a relationship do you feel you have with the country in which your narrative is set? Did you feel, at times, like a foreigner to it?
Yes, absolutely. But I often feel like a foreigner in virtually every country I’m in – even, at times, in England or Malaysia – so that’s not unusual!
Din’s project is a way of reclaiming his past. There’s a bit in the novel where he rails against the ignorance of young people who don’t know where they’ve come from, historically speaking – because in modern Southeast Asia, there’s often a blithe ignorance of modern history, which is often associated with hardship and humiliation. Colonial history isn’t ‘our’ history so it’s best not to celebrate it, so the thinking goes. Din wants to go beyond the formal recording of history by Westerners and look at folk history – he’s a dreamer, an idealist.
Margaret is an expert in non-verbal communication, claiming to understand the motives behind expression and gesture. As a novelist, are you in the same position? If so, how well do you understand your own characters and the actions they take?
I try to understand my characters as fully as possible – I’m in control, after all. But all good characters should surprise their creators; they have to take on a life of their own. There’s always a moment in the writing of a novel when it feels right to have your characters do things that you had not planned at the outset – and that’s when you know that you have a novel, not just a series of ideas.
Do you see yourself as a political writer?
No, I don’t, but it’s impossible to be a modern Southeast Asian writer without being aware of politics, and the way they impact on every aspect of society, so there’s always going to be a political element to my work.
Margaret thinks, about Indonesia, that ‘in this country you had to surrender to myths, to the uncertainty of stories, to the failure of logic’. How much of an inspiration are the places in which your stories are set?
A sense of place and the specifics of culture are hugely important to my novels. In Map of the Invisible World, for example, mythology and the appreciation of spirituality that exist in Java become key characters – the feeling that life is essentially uncontrollable (an anathema to a person like Margaret) becomes stronger as the novel goes on. People in Southeast Asia do attribute more importance to that which lies outside the empirical than people do in the West – but often, as is the case with Margaret – the ‘supernatural’ is merely a way to explain things that don’t work.
How did writing this book change you, if at all?
It changed me in too many ways to describe in the space of a short interview!
Why did you choose to end the novel with Johan setting off on a journey?
Because his life is a journey without end, a terrible circular thing without closure. Whereas Adam, Din, Margaret and Karl have all suffered in their own way, their lives have a path that will lead to some kind of conclusion, whether happy or sad. Johan is caught in an awful cycle of non-resolution, a life in which the only relief from pain comes from being in constant movement. So I wanted to end with him being in motion, wanting to seek an end but not certain that he will find it – and we are not sure where his journey will end, or how.
What are you working on at the moment?
A novel set in 2008. But I can’t really say more than that at the moment.
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The Siege of Kohima 1944 – The Epic Story of the Last Great Stand of Empire
Kohima. In this remote Indian village near the border with Burma, a tiny force of British and Indian troops faced the might of the Imperial Japanese Army. Outnumbered ten to one, the defenders fought the Japanese hand to hand in a battle that was amongst the most savage in modern warfare.]]>
The Siege of Kohima 1944 – The Epic Story of the Last Great Stand of Empire
Kohima. In this remote Indian village near the border with Burma, a tiny force of British and Indian troops faced the might of the Imperial Japanese Army. Outnumbered ten to one, the defenders fought the Japanese hand to hand in a battle that was amongst the most savage in modern warfare.
A garrison of no more than 1,500 fighting men, desperately short of water and with the wounded compelled to lie in the open, faced a force of 15,000 Japanese. They held the pass and prevented a Japanese victory that would have proved disastrous for the British. Another six weeks of bitter fighting followed as British and Indian reinforcements strove to drive the enemy out of India. When the battle was over, a Japanese army that had invaded India on a mission of imperial conquest had suffered the worst defeat in its history. Thousands of men lay dead on a devastated landscape, while tens of thousands more Japanese starved in a catastrophic retreat eastwards. They called the journey back to Burma the ‘Road of Bones’, as friends and comrades committed suicide or dropped dead from hunger along the jungle paths.
Fergal Keane has reported for the BBC from conflicts on every continent over the past 25 years, and he brings to this work of history not only rigorous scholarship but a raw understanding of the pitiless nature of war. It is a story filled with vivid characters: the millionaire’s son who refused a commission and was awarded a VC for his sacrifice in battle, the Roedean debutante who led a guerrilla band in the jungle, and the General who defied the orders of a hated superior in order to save the lives of his men. Based on original research in Japan, Britain and India, ‘Road of Bones’ is a story about extraordinary courage and the folly of imperial dreams.
Check back in April for a free extract.
At the heart of Klein’s book was the notion that companies were now focussed on creating brands; products were an afterthought. Brands, Klein argued, used to be a way of giving everyday products a recognisable face; now they had usurped these products, becoming more important than the products themselves. Companies which are now permanent fixtures and fittings of our daily landscape came into being. Behind their pre-eminence, however, lurked something distinctly unsettling: an outsourced supply chain which allowed the companies to focus resources on creating their brands rather than on the products themselves. Klein dedicates a large chunk of the book to laying bare networks of exploitation on which some of the world’s most ubiquitous and successful products are based.
Klein backs this overarching thesis up with an astonishingly detailed set of research; what stands it aside from other polemics of the time is the painstaking detail of Klein’s case studies – the book took four years of careful field research to write.
That said, all of this is presented in an informal way and with such a paucity of language that the reader never feels bogged down in the figures which line the book. It begins, in fact, with Klein looking at her own building – owned by the town coat maker – who Klein then links to the book’s thesis as a whole. Klein approaches her subjects throughout with humanity and objectivity, combining facts with personal stories – whether looking at Nike’s growing influence in American high schools or sweatshop workers in the Philippines – preferring to use the force of facts rather than emotion to press her case.
Klein may now set her sights on different targets: her latest book, Shock Doctrine, won the inaugural Warwick Prize for writing in 2009 for its excoriating analysis of the implementation of the ideas of the Chicago school. However, No Logo is as insightful and relevant today as ever before and will undoubtedly be revisited by countless readers.
Read more:
]]>I have a vague recollection of my first sketchbook. I think it consisted of a collection of blank paper torn from my mother’s diary. I remember the pages came from the back of the book, so the month must have been December. The torn edges curled slightly, there were small, discoloured holes where the stitching had been, and the paper itself was thin and transparent. I wrote my name on each page as large as I could. Ownership began here. I was about four years old and got a severe telling off, but it was worth it. Later I heard my mother tell a visitor that I loved to rip paper. I was, she stated, a nightmare. My love affair with torn paper continues to this day although it was some time before I understood that destruction is part of creativity. During the years when I used to paint full time I kept dozens of sketchbooks. I had made friends with another, more established artist who had the most wonderful books filled with effortless drawings and strong, confident watercolours. At first I tried to copy her but somehow text always strayed onto my pages, giving them a feel that was, thankfully, entirely my own.
In those days I didn’t travel abroad much and my best sketchbooks were the ones I made on my annual trip to Cornwall. Day after day I would sit on the beach drawing my children as they played. Small children do not stay in one place for long and I learnt to draw quickly, in situ, using whatever came to hand: thin pencils, graphite sticks, pen and black ink. In the margins of the pages I wrote short, acerbic stories about the people with whom I shared the beach. I would fill other pages with found objects, scraps of metal, exquisite slivers of driftwood bleached by the sea, all perfect as collage material. My books were beginning to be objects in themselves; a warehouse of memory distilled from each summer.
Back at home in the dark winter days they were a poignant reminder of my desire to capture the passage of time. Years passed in this way. Then to my dismay the local shop discontinued the darkgreen sketchbooks I used. But I had begun to write anyway, I was busy with other things and had no time to draw. The sketchbooks were consigned to the loft where they remain to this day. I wrote furiously and took to keeping notes for my novels in larger, more impersonal exercise books, or, as more often was the case, on the computer.
One day, soon after my first novel was accepted for publication, I was given a small notebook with a black cover. The paper inside reminded me of the diary I had once destroyed. However, the cover disturbed me. It was too clean, too ordered, too smooth for someone as chaotic as me. So I did the only thing possible. I ripped it off. Instantly I could breathe again. Then I made my own cover. A collage of faded sepia photos, found on foraging expeditions to flea markets: sad faces from unknown pasts.
I was not painting. The novels were taking up every waking moment of my life. My studio had shrunk to a table on the landing, my oils were drying out. And although I missed the mess and smell of paint, the way the hand and eye worked together creating narrative through colour and line, I could not see the use of a sketchbook. I no longer sat dreaming on a Cornish beach. Now my husband and I travelled to Italy, accompanied by whichever reluctant adolescent happened to be around. I took my new, unused notebook with me.
Sitting in a café, hesitantly I began to draw. Almost instantly a story started to take shape. Word and image jostled for attention. Keeping my handwriting as small as possible, I wrote a character piece called ‘The Woman Who Loved Concrete’. Then I drew the woman. Even now, whenever I pick up that particular notebook, I am transported back to the sunlight on the oleander plants and the smell of strong black coffee that filtered through the shutters of the Italian piazza. The switch is instantaneous and needs no further explanation.
Since that first one I have become obsessed all over again by the keeping of notebooks, with their collage of found images, their drawings and the stories that later creep into my novels. They are my precious resources. For in them exists the relationship between work (my novels and paintings) and my personal life. Nowhere else but in these small objects, with their stolen papers and pasted memories, is the connection stronger.
More like this:
]]>Penguin kicked off the new year by offering loss-leading excerpts from the e-book version of Paul Hoffmann’s haunting novel The Left Hand of God – which plays out in a Mervyn Peake-esque imaginary world stuffed with absolutely terrifying characters. Perhaps because of the genre, this loss-leader concept seems to have served them well as a means of attracting new readers to the novel – with countless reviewers who claim to not normally buy Penguin books saying that they clicked through from the app. It’ll be interesting to see how it pans out with other texts.
Alongside this new foray into suck-in iBooks, Penguin also seem to have recognised the huge marketing potential of the iPhone. Their umbrella app – last updated in late Novemeber – seeks to update readers regularly on Penguin release and upcoming titles, therein building their fan base. Potential click-through is always in mind though, with a stylised shopping trolley on each page.
With genre-specific searching and the weekly Penguin podacst, readers are able to move throughout Penguin’s content. The app itself – with a free price point reflecting its status as a marketing platform – is largely concentrated on Penguin US at the moment, though it does have numerous reviews of books published in the UK.
While it remains to be seen whether publishers will be able to develop the sort of brand loyalty seen in other industries, these are intriguing new ways of engaging with readers.
Read more Digital Diary entries:
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This week 4th estate editor Mark Richards pays tribute to the amazing JG Ballard, who sadly passed away last year, and talks about Miracles of Life, his Book of the Noughties.
One of the great pleasures of being in publishing is working with authors you have long admired, and previously known only as a reader and fan. In my first year at Fourth Estate I worked on J.G. Ballard’s autobiography, Miracles of Life. A concise but capacious work, fascinating about both the Shanghai of his childhood and the Britain of his adult years whether or not you are interested in Ballard the man, Miracles of Life was the last provocation of a provocateur – a gentle, human and very moving book from a writer best known for his searing and prophetic visions of our increasingly technologised future.
It was, sadly, his final book, and he died after a long illness in April last year. I feel deeply lucky to have met him and worked with him.
Read more about J.G. Ballard:
]]>In the amazingly evocative narrative, we follow the Depression-era adventures of Jason and Whit Fireson—bank robbers known as the Firefly Brothers by the press, the authorities, and an adoring public that worships their acts as heroic counterpunches thrown at a broken system.
To get a flavour of the book take a look at this video – currently featuring the US jacket and pub dates. Our version looks like this and is published in April, but don’t worry if you cant wait that long…
…We know you’ll love the book as much as we did which is why we’re giving away proof copies. Click here to find out how to get your hands on one, hot off the press or the slab, whichever you prefer.
]]>With Christmas Day seeing Amazon sell more e-books than their printed counterparts for the first time ever – perhaps in part due to it being the present most teens were unwrapping that very morning – 2010 looks set to be a year of digital experimentation and creativity: one which will see a clash of the technological titans, as well as a raft of brilliant and not-so-brilliant ideas in the publishing industry.
Wasting no time in setting out their stall, Google launched their new smartphone this Tuesday, the fancifully named ‘Nexus One.’ A direct competitor to Apple’s iPhone – rather than a subtle attempt to undermine the latter’s dominance with the Android operating system as they have attempted thus far – the Nexus will have a 5 megapixel screen to the iPhone’s 3. Despite outdoing the iPhone in terms of functionality, the Nexus owes much to Apple’s simple design: besides four small buttons along the bottom strip, the phone is black with a large screen.
Apple meanwhile, have been tinkering on their new tablet-like device – referred to in the interim as the iSlate – which was rumoured yesterday to be a ten-inch slate with e-reader capabilities and has been described by some as a ‘Kindle Killer.’ The Venturebeat blog reported that the iSlate will be marketed mostly as an e-reader with iPhone functionality, a sort of smartphone/e-reader hybrid. Either way, an announcement is slated for the end of January.
Whether this will smash Apple’s apparently inexorable rise to pre-eminence is debateable; what is indisputable however, is that these developments provide publishers with yet another potential platform on which to publish, with both helping to improve the e-reading experience and much for publishers to chew over.
]]>At least one major publishing company will be acquired by a retailer. For instance (and this is NOT a prediction, just a for-instance), Amazon could acquire Random House or Apple could buy Simon & Schuster.
I don’t know whether this would be a good or bad thing for the industry as a whole, but Curtis certainly makes a convincing argument for how this could bring stability to the publisher in question.
Meanwhile, over on Brave New World, the involvement of Google is viewed as a major deciding factor in the future of publishing, regardless of the success of their book settlement.
A while back, we did our own survey of predictions by industry insiders for a feature entitled Publishing in 2025. To read what MD of Press Books, John Bond; Peter Collingridge, MD of Apt Studio and Enhanced Editions; and Scott Pack, Publisher of The Friday Project, as well as many others, think the future of publishing will look like, click on the links below.
Publishing in 2025
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Reading Lace: When Dreams Become Reality
Read the first chapter
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Next month, New Books magazine, the magazine dedicated to book clubs and reading groups, is paying special attention to four of our very talented authors, debuting in Spring.
Read more about brilliant debut authors from Press Books!
Reading Lace: When Dreams Become Reality
Read a sample extract here
Rebecca Connell: Pushing Moral Boundaries
Read the first chapter
C. E. Morgan’s favourite books on BookArmy
Read the first chapter
Read the first chapter
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