The Harmony Silk Factory

Tash Aw

With some books it takes a chapter to two for the book to grab you. Fewer manage to do that in a couple pages. Rare is the book that can manage it in a paragraph. For me, Aw managed to do it in the first sentence "The Harmony Silk Factory is the name of the shop house my father bought in 1942 as a front for his illegal businesses". Jasper Lim is speaking of his father Johnny, a Chinese peasant trying to make his way in Malaysia, set just prior to the turmoil of WWII and the Japanese invasion. At the start, Jasper knows almost nothing of his father's history aside from his name, and that he ran the Harmony Silk Factory, one of the few businesses in the Kinta Valley. "For nearly forty years the Harmony Silk Factory was the most notorious establishment in the country, but now it stands empty and silent and dusty. Death erases all traces, all memories of lives that once existed, completely and forever. That is what father always told me. I think it was the only true thing he ever said." Jasper begins the search for his history with the factory. The first third of the book is narrative set up that provides background how Johnny got his start by being able to fix nearly anything. Working at a British mine he was treated badly, resulting in a fight where he stabbed his supervisor with a screwdriver. The manager died a year and a day afterward, so the death could not be considered a murder. By the time the supervisor has died, Johnny has disappeared. Johnny, a survivor, lies, cheats and steals his way to a version of respectability. and comes to own the "notorious" Harmony Silk Factory. He would let nothing stand in the way of his success, coming to ownership of the factory more than a bit deviously. To me, what largely sets this book apart from others is the interesting way the final two thirds of the story is managed by Aw. Two sections are both first person narratives by key characters of the same events in the same time period, but the different perspective only slowly sheds light on events that provokes an 'aha' experience on more than a few occasions. Jasper finds his history and takes us along for a great ride at the same time. This made it to the top ten for the year so far, and us unlikely to be unseated.