The Harmony Silk Factory Paperback – February 7, 2006

this is a woven tapestry of patched together visions of the same man and his disasterous times. It is beautifully written, mysterious and confounding in that the enigma remains throughout. Please try this book - it is exemplary of this partivular genre

Tash Aw's debut novel, The Harmony Silk Factory (2006) is an impressive beginning. It is a complex historical-based novel set in Malaysia that showcases a skill in creating a number of distinct storytelling voices. It is a complex story with the enigmatic Malaysian Chinese communist/collaborator/businessman Johnny Lim at the forefront of a story told from three separate points of view. Lim, is linked to all three characters intimately, but none of them really know him or connect with him. The first part of the story "Johnny" is told from the point of view of his only son, Jasper, who survived a difficult childbirth that took the life of his mother. Jasper's story is told from the perspective of a journalist who has heavily researched his subject. His father remains a cypher at his death. Part Two: "1941" is essentially Snow's diary which records the events of 1941, prior to the Japanese occupation of Malaya, in which she is wed to Johnny and takes a vacation/honeymoon with Johnny, his best friend Peter Wormwood (an eccentric Englishman), Honey (a typical colonial Englishman who owns a tin mine), and the suave and later diabolical Kunichika. They travel to some uninhabited islands and their lives are forever changed by the events that take place there. Part Three, "The Garden," is told from the point of view of Peter who alternates from his present as an again old man planning a garden at his rest home and the events of the past in which all of the characters were inextricably entwined. I like how Aw uses the novel to describe pre-WWII Malaya and life in the Kinta Valley. All in all quite a mature work fiction and I look forward to reading his subsequent novels: Map of the Invisible World and Five Star Billionaire.

I recently read this author's novel Five Star Billionaire, set in Shanghai and Malaysia, with interest but also with certain misgivings as I found some of the characters and situations repetitive and the plot confusing.This book is also complicated as it tells the story - that of a Malaysian businessman of Chinese descent called Johnny Lim - from three different viewpoints, that of his son, wife and an expatriate Englishman. Lim is portrayed by his son as a cold-blooded killer who collaborated with the Japanese during World War II. However, there is none of this in the other versions where he comes over as rather faceless and bland albeit a mystery man.Some of the scenes are presented from the three different viewpoints. Overall I found the story confusing and farfetched. The relationships between the characters – the Englishman and Lim, Lim and a Japanese who is either a highly educated academic or military despot depending on which narrator is talking, Lim's wife and the lovesick Englishman – are also difficult to accept. The last few pages may be an attempt to explain what was actually going on but, if so, I failed to grasp it.Nevertheless, it is quite an interesting read although the Englishman comes over as a caricature of a white man sweating in the tropics despite having spent 60 years in Malaya/Malaysia.

his best book

Having spent in my early career a decade working and living in South East Asia I enjoyed reading The Harmony Silk Factory very much. It brought back vivid memories of my time in Malaysia. In my mind I could again experience the sights, sounds and smells of the rain forest, the kampungs and the people.

Laughably bad writing mixed with some evocative imagery makes this an odd read. Unable to leave unfinished any book, no matter how bad, I got through this one by sheer will power.Three voices have a part in telling some aspect of the life of Johnny the pre-Malay Independence-era ethnic Chinese gangster. One, Johnny's son Jasper, is very poorly thought-out and realized (he's part omniscient narrator who knows all kinds of facts like a mass murder in a cave and yet, like a second person, ends his story because he would rather go for a swim than open gifts which will undoubtedly resolve his narrative). The second, the daughter of a wealthy Chinese landowner (Johnny's wife Snow), is told in diary form bordering on the ridiculous and hilarious (see Shamela). The third is the most interesting, a romantic dandy named Peter who becomes Johnny's best friend. But it doesn't save the story.The novel's greatest flaw is the lack of believability of both the contemporary behavior of Snow (an aristocratic young woman like her would never have behaved the way she did... both sexually and living rough in the aftermath of a failed sea crossing) and her voice as written on the page was just NOT a pampered young woman of her era.Not historic in feel, except for some of the atmospheric descriptions of landscape and setting by Jasper and Peter. There have GOT to be better writings set in colonial Malaya.

Conflicting points of view from three narrators beautifully constructed and written.

I was unable to get this book from my public library, so I ordered a new one from Amazon for $1.00. A new copy paperback. It was in great condition and the story was very good. I was pleased to have ordered it and will order more items like this.