Tash Aw is the author of five novels, including, most recently, The South, and a memoir of a Chinese-Malaysian family, Strangers on a Pier, a finalist for the Los Angeles Book Prize. His work has won the Whitbread and Commonwealth Prizes, an O. Henry Award, and been longlisted three times for the Man Booker Prize. His novels have been translated into 26 languages and been longlisted for the Prix Médicis Étranger, Prix Inrocks, and Premio Gregor von Rezzori.
As an essayist and critic, he has contributed to The Paris Review, The New York Review of Books, The New York Times, and The Guardian, among many other publications. He has translated two books by Édouard Louis, A Woman’s Battles and Transformations (2022, shortlisted for the TA First Translation Award) and The Collapse (forthcoming, 2026).
He is the holder of fellowships from the DAAD Artist-in-Berlin program, the Columbia Institute of Ideas and Imagination in Paris, the Santa Maddalena Foundation, and the Shanghai Writers Association. He is currently the Samuel Fischer Gastprofessur for Literature at Freie Universität in Berlin.
He lives in Paris and Kuala Lumpur.