Ratings5
Average rating4
From the author of The Harmony Silk Factory and Five Star Billionaire, a compelling depiction of a man’s act of violence, set against the backdrop of Asia in flux Ah Hock is an ordinary man of simple means. Born and raised in a Malaysian fishing village, he favors stability above all, a preference at odds with his rapidly modernizing surroundings. So what brings him to kill a man? This question leads a young, privileged journalist to Ah Hock’s door. While the victim has been mourned and the killer has served time for the crime, Ah Hock's motive remains unclear, even to himself. His vivid confession unfurls over extensive interviews with the journalist, herself a local whose life has taken a very different course. The process forces both the speaker and his listener to reckon with systems of power, race, and class in a place where success is promised to all yet delivered only to its lucky heirs. An uncompromising portrait of an outsider navigating a society in transition, Tash Aw’s anti-nostalgic tale, We, the Survivors, holds its tension to the very end. In the wake of loss and destruction, hope is among the survivors.
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More a 3.75 than a 4.0 because I got terribly irritated that the author - a Malaysian who lives abroad - couldn't fact-check that Malaysia has not had a jury system since 1995. When that error occurred in the first quarter, it took me more than 50 pages to settle into the story because the mind was wondering what other fact about my country - our country - he got wrong.
But once I got settled in, the tragedy of Hock Lye drew me in. The story focuses not just on the dark and exploitative migrant labour scene in Malaysia but also on people - like Hock Lye and his Mom - who are stuck in a vicious cycle of poverty. The Malaysia that is painted in this story is not pretty - everyone is corrupt (exaggeratedly so, I must say) and the system (like the drains) is broken. It's in these broken places that people like Keong, Hock Lye's friend, and the people running the illegal labour racket, survive.