The South

A Novel

De: Tash Aw

Narrado por: Windson Liong

A radiant, intimate novel of the longing that blooms between two boys over the course of one summer—about family, desire, and what we inherit.

When his grandfather dies, Jay travels south with his family to the property they’ve inherited, a once flourishing farm that has fallen into disrepair. The trees are diseased, the fields parched from months of drought.

Jay’s father, Jack, sends him out to work the land, or whatever land is left. Over the course of these hot, dense days, Jay finds himself drawn to Chuan, the son of the farm’s manager, different from him in every way except for one.

Out in the fields, and on the streets into town, the charge between the boys intensifies. Inside the house, the other family members begin to confront their own secrets and regrets. Jack is a professor at a struggling local college whose failures might have begun when he married his student, Sui Ching. Sui Ching does her best to keep the family together, though she too wonders what her life could have been. And Fong, the manager, refuses to look at what is: at Chuan, at the land, at the global forces that threaten to render his whole life obsolete.

At once sweeping and compressed, Tash Aw’s The South is a family novel of change and desire—a story of what happens when public and private lives collide, told with uncommon grace and beauty.

©2025 Tash Aw (P)2025 HarperCollins Publishers

Weak Narration

A weak narrator can ruin an otherwise enjoyable book. That was my problem with the audiobook of “The South.” The narrator was hard to understand, speaking with a thick Southeast Asian accent. There was no differentiation between the voices of the characters—men and women, old and young—and no effort to dramatize them. The book is divided into chapters, but the narrator did not announce each new chapter or even pause between chapters. This was confusing, as the point of view often shifted when a new chapter began.

Having said that, the book was an intriguing look at a troubled family in Malaysia. The family spends the summer at a struggling farm that the mother has inherited, run by the father’s half-brother. The teenage son and the son of the half-brother fall for each other, while the parents and half-brother deal with their own romantic and financial rivalries. There are well-written scenes that explore the poverty of the region, the decline of its agriculture and the stoicism of the local characters. It all seemed real, and I enjoyed the book.