We, the Survivors
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
A murderer's confession--devastating, unblinking, poignant, unforgettable--which reveals a story of class, education, and the inescapable workings of destiny.
Ah Hock is an ordinary, uneducated man born in a Malaysian fishing village and now trying to make his way in a country that promises riches and security to everyone, but delivers them only to a chosen few. With Asian society changing around him, like many he remains trapped in a world of poorly paid jobs that just about allow him to keep his head above water but ultimately lead him to murder a migrant worker from Bangladesh.
The question of why 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.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Aw's captivating novel (after Five Star Billionaire) revolves around a fateful moment of violence set against the backdrop of an ever-changing Malaysia. In an almost stream-of-consciousness work, readers become the proverbial fly on the wall as the main character, Ah Hock, a convicted murderer, tells his tale to a graduate student working on a book. In alternating chapters of Ah Hock's rambling confession and brief personal exchanges between Hock and his interviewer, Hock's story wanders through his poverty-ridden upbringing with a single mother, his unsuccessful marriage, his murder trial, his days in prison, and, finally, to the night he committed murder. A simple man, Hock has spent his life believing hard work would bring success; as the manager of a fish farm, he reaches that success, but when his workers develop cholera, he's forced to find replacements. Desperate for a solution, Hock seeks help from a boyhood friend now trafficking illegal workers, and this fateful decision leads him to an act of violence he never thought himself capable of. As Hock and his interviewer seek to understand what brought him to kill, readers are drawn into a Malaysia overwhelmed with thousands of immigrants seeking refuge, employment, and survival. Aw's potent work entraps readers in the slow, fateful descent of its main character, witnessing his life spiral to its inevitable conclusion.
