Conversation with Tash Aw and Yiyun Li

Asia House Bagri Foundation Literature Festival – Pre-Festival Event

Yiyun Li
Tash Aw
In conversation with Claire Armitstead

We open our Festival examination of Changing Values across Asia with two novels set in the ‘new’ China.  Li launches her latest novel, Kinder Than Solitude, a tale of attempted murder, deception, honour and the power of digital technology to shape the present and future. Aw’s Man Booker Prize long-listed, Five Star Billionaire, charts the overlapping lives of migrant Malaysian workers in Shanghai, counterpointing their trials and tribulations with the old life they left behind.

Yiyun Li grew up in Beijing and moved to the US in 1996. Her debut collection, A Thousand Years of Good Prayers, won the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award and Guardian First Book Award. Her novel, The Vagrants, was shortlisted for Dublin IMPAC Award. Her books have been translated into more than twenty languages. She was selected by Granta as one of the 21 Best Young American Novelists under 35, and was named by The New Yorker as one of the top 20 writers under 40. Li lives in California and will be joining us for the launch of her new novel.

Born in Taipei, Taiwan, to Malaysian parents, Tash Aw grew up in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia before moving to England to study law.  He worked as a lawyer for four years whilst writing his debut novel.  Aw is the author of two previous novels, The Harmony Silk Factory, winner of the Costa First Novel Award and a Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best First Novel, and Map of the Invisible World.

They will be speaking with Claire Armitstead, Literary Editor of The Guardian

Sponsored by the British Malaysian Society

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