Tash Aw: Outsiders

22.10.2024 / 19:00 – 21:00
With Tash Aw

Reading and conversation with Vanessa Vu
Images by Sim Chi Yin

What does it mean to be an outsider in your own country, and even in your own family? Acclaimed author Tash Aw explores the changing nature of modern migration through his own family story of dislocation and adaptation. From a taxi ride in present-day Bangkok, to eating Kentucky Fried Chicken in 1980s Kuala Lumpur, to his grandfathers’ treacherous boat journeys to Malaysia from mainland China in the 1920s, Aw weaves together stories of insiders and outsiders, images from rural villages to megacity night clubs, and voices in a dizzying variety of languages, dialects, and slangs, to create an intricate and astoundingly vivid portrait of who we are: people caught between the fast-approaching future and a past that won’t let go.

Tash Aw currently resides in Berlin as a fellow of the DAAD Artists-in-Berlin Program and his memoir Strangers on a Pier has just been published in German translation by Luchterhand. Two good opportunities to talk to him. The conversation will be moderated by journalist Vanessa Vu, with images provided by the Singaporean artist Sim Chi Yin.

Tash Aw was born to Malaysian parents in Taiwan and grew up in Kuala Lumpur. His is the author of five books that have been honored with numerous awards, including the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize and the Whitbread First Novel Award, and was longlisted twice for the Man Booker Prize. His work has been translated into 23 languages. Tash Aw divides his time between France and Malaysia and writes commentaries on culture and politics in Southeast Asia for the New York Times and the BBC, among others.

daadgalerie
Oranienstraße 161
Berlin-Kreuzberg

Free admission