Malaysian writer Tash Aw on his new coming-of-age novel

Malaysian writer Tash Aw is no new name to the literary circles in his country, where he grew up before moving to London. Longlisted twice for the Booker Prize (then the Man Booker Prize), first for his debut, The Harmony Silk Factory in 2005, and then again in 2013 for Five Star Billionaire, his books often portray subtle but powerful character development of individuals navigating complex socio-political landscapes, especially in the context of Southeast Asia. His latest book from Fourth Estate (Harper Collins India in the Indian subcontinent), and the first in what is going to be a quartet, The South is an unmissable coming-of-age tale that explores the of resonant themes of class, culture, identity, sexual desire, familial tensions, and the weight of inheritance – both physical and personal.

Set in late 90s in rural Malaysia when the country is caught in the cusp of significant economic and social transformation, Aw is masterfully able to craft a lyrical narrative that often alternates between the first and the third person offering glimpses into the lives of its main character, Jay who has recently moved with his family to their decaying farm post his grandfather’s death. Amidst the oppressive heat and constant squabbles from his father to take charge, Jay develops complicated feelings for his half-brother, Chuan, and what unfurls next is as much a familial drama as is a careful observation on generational divides and how far we have come (or not!) as a society concerning class and privilege, homophobia, bullying, and familial expectations in Asian cultures.

In a conversation with Scroll, Aw reflects on his portrayal of in-between spaces in his writing and unpacks how his characters wrestle familial tensions in The South. He also shares his thoughts on perspective shifts, the emotional weight of memory and belonging and the art of capturing the truth in literature.

One of the most striking things about reading The South was its sheer ability to explore the complexity of sexuality, desire, and secrecy within the framework of an Asian (Malaysian) family. How did you approach writing these intimate moments while balancing the weight of cultural expectations, especially in the case of certain topics that continue to remain unwelcome in many parts of Asia, including your own hometown?
The role of novelists is to write truthfully about life as they see it, and to resist as far as possible the expectations placed upon them – expectations that might be cultural, familial, from friends, even supportive ones, and I would go so far as to say oneself – in order to produce literature that reflects true life. In that way, I’m just following in the tradition of novelists throughout time, who attempt to capture their societies at a particular moment in time. I don’t see things in terms of isolated topics – I see a portrait of a group of people, all their flaws and the beauty. I try and render these without judgment. My work is a mirror of society, in which people can see themselves. It’s a very universal and timeless – and in some senses, simple – way of writing. The writer blocks out the noise and focuses on the truth. That said, this is hardly a controversial novel, unless someone is going out of their way to interpret it as such.

Another theme that resonated strongly across the novel is that of belonging, both within one’s family and in a broader societal context. In Asian cultures, there is often a strong emphasis on family, tradition, and duty. Your characters in the book are seen navigating these tensions in deeply personal ways. Were there any specific real-life experiences, either of your own or those around you, that have shaped how you built these conflicts?
The tensions and pressures faced by the characters are merely those faced by countless ordinary people around the world. As you point out, many of these tensions hold greater resonance in Asian societies, but they are true to some extent in most countries. The greatest challenge for the individual is how to define themselves within society, and the most basic unit of society is the family, which replicates in miniature form all the wider pressures of society and magnifies them – which is why the examination of the family is such a useful way of looking at how society at large works. Who hasn’t known the tensions between duty to the family and individual freedom? And, by extension, aren’t we all thinking about a way to be free, in a personal sense, in our daily lives? We want to feel free in our work, our relationships with partners, parents, children – but we also have to navigate the duties towards them. A lot of these obligations are created by society – women face greater pressures to conform than men, for example, and these are pressures created by social custom over time, as a means of control. How, then, do the mothers and daughters in the novel find a way to live freely? For years I observed my own mother and sisters struggling with these questions – the conflicts in the book are all too real, and common.

The house to which the family returns to isn’t just a physical space – it holds history, memory, and unresolved tensions, almost like a character in its own right. Would you agree? If yes, how did it help in the emotional and narrative arc of the story, according to you?
The house and land hold immense symbolic value, being tied to the idea of ownership and belonging that you’ve mentioned earlier. Some of the characters feel duty-bound to hang on to it even though it’s no longer viable to do so, simply because of the symbolic value – the property gives them the status of being middle-class landowners, and they don’t want to lose that. But others, particularly the younger ones, don’t care so much about this; they want to achieve personal enrichment, which is more to do with self-definition and freedom, rather than being tied down to possessions. For them, belonging is an emotional quality, not a material one. It’s linked to intimacy, love, inclusiveness, freedom – not to a house. But for the older generation, it’s the reverse. That’s where a lot of the novel’s tension comes from.

Your writing transitions quickly and seamlessly between time and perspective in every other chapter. At the same time, you have often been praised for your fluidity and restraint in your prose, where silence and omission carry as much weight as words, which is also true for this book in question. Could you share more about what these shifts reveal regarding your characters, as well as more about your writing style, which carefully chooses to reveal certain aspects but also holds back on others? What literary influences have shaped your approach?
Silences reveal as much as noise, more so I believe; it’s true in real life as it is on the page. But some characters are noisy, others are more reserved – it really just depends on the particular character. I never decide in advance, I allow the characters a certain freedom on the page, without manipulating them too much. I don’t deliberately set out to be silent on some matters and explicit about others – the characters dictate how much is said or unsaid. The question of fluidity and perspective is also dictated by the concerns of the novel. In this case, I originally wanted the story to be told only from Jay’s point of view, but very quickly I realised the novel was about the family as a whole, so I needed to offer other characters a chance to come into focus. The novel is also about the impossibility of communication within a family – with the people closest to you – so the gaps between the various perspectives mimic the gaps of understanding that exist within a family. In this respect I suppose my work draws inspiration from the novelistic flair of Faulkner or certain works of Virginia Woolf, but also from Proust, in the sense of the writerly perspective moving through time.

Your characters, whether it’s the central protagonist Jay, his adoration, Chuan, or Jay’s family and everyone else in the book, are seen to be caught between different worlds – whether geographically, emotionally, socially or economically. Would you like to tell us what draws you to these in-between spaces, and do you see them as a defining trait of your storytelling style?
That’s a very good observation. I guess it’s true that I’m drawn to in-between spaces, and, especially, the people who inhabit these spaces, which are mostly emotional ones rather than physical ones (though of course, the physical spaces are important too). As a child I used to feel that I was the only inhabitant of this liminal space – an outsider who was also, in some way, an insider. But as I grew older I realised that these insider-outsiders were everywhere. So many people feel as if they don’t fully belong to their countries, their societies, their families – the very places that were meant to harbour them and provide them total security. Those spaces, with the tensions created by duty and conformity which you mentioned earlier, make a lot of people feel as though they don’t belong. A lot of people don’t even feel comfortable in their own bodies, particularly those who struggled with gender or sexuality. Once I became aware of this, it was easy to capture this feeling in my novels.

Perhaps it is a bit unfair to ask an author to pick their favourite bit from something that they have written, so instead of that, how about if you can share a particular moment, scene, or even a single line that felt like the heart of the story for you? Something that, once written, made you feel that everything else will eventually fall into place, and it did?
I actually can’t do that! It’s impossible for me to isolate one line or one passage of the novel as a turning point, particularly since the novel is about very gentle shifts.

To conclude, if you had to leave your readers with just one lingering thought or question after finishing this book, the first of what is supposed to be a quartet, what would it be? And what can your readers expect next from the books to come in this series?
I think I’d like readers to reflect on how we move through life – how we experience the passing of time, how we experience everyday occurrences and relationships; and also, how we hang onto them as we grow older. The subsequent novels continue asking the same questions as The South does: how do we fight, even in silent, invisible ways, to carve out a life for ourselves that is truthful and free, amid the pressures of duty and belonging? In the novels that follow the characters will be much older, and some will enjoy more of the spotlight than others. The aim is for readers to journey through time with the characters and perhaps find resonance in this journey with their own lives.