Five Star Billionaire
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4.0 • 2 Ratings
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- $6.99
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- $6.99
Publisher Description
Phoebe is a factory girl who has come to Shanghai with the promise of a job - but when she arrives she discovers that the job doesn't exist. Gary is a country boy turned pop star who is spinning out of control. Justin is in Shanghai to expand his family's real-estate empire, only to find that he might not be up to the task. He has long harboured a crush on Yinghui, who has reinvented herself from a poetry-loving, left-wing activist to a successful Shanghai businesswoman. She is about to make a deal with the shadowy figure of Walter Chao, the five-star billionaire of the novel, who - with his secrets and his schemes - has a hand in the lives of each of the characters. All bring their dreams and hopes to Shanghai, the shining symbol of the New China, which, like the novel's characters, is constantly in flux and which plays its own fateful role in the lives of its inhabitants. Five Star Billionaire, the dazzling kaleidoscopic new novel by the award-winning writer Tash Aw, offers rare insight into China today, with its constant transformations and its promise of possibility.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Aw (Map of the Invisible World), in his third novel, follows five Malaysian immigrants in Shanghai as they try to realize the city's dazzling promise. Justin C.K. Lim has come to expand his family's Forbes-listed financial empire, while his old crush Yinghui, just nominated for a Businesswoman of the Year award, is haunted by her idealistic activist past. Phoebe, having grown up in a village that "was not a place for dreams or ambition," jumps at the chance to take over a friend's restaurant job in mainland China, but when she arrives, she discovers that the restaurant has been abandoned. Pop star Gary, after conquering Malaysia and Taiwan, comes to cement his idol status, only to find himself under siege by the tabloids. Walter Chao is a powerful billionaire whose charitable deeds are as mystifying as his charm. These characters, whose lives intersect and overlap in the strangest of ways, create a portrait of an unforgiving city that "held its promises just out of your reach." But like the characters, who are left confused and wanting more, one reaches the novel's conclusion feeling disappointed.
