We, the Survivors

By: Tash Aw

Narrated by: Jamie Zubairi

Length: 10 hrs and 4 mins

Publisher's summary

A murderer's confession - devastating, unblinking, poignant, unforgettable - which reveals a story of class, education, and the inescapable workings of destiny.

Ah Hock is an ordinary, uneducated man born in a Malaysian fishing village and now trying to make his way in a country that promises riches and security to everyone, but delivers them only to a chosen few. With Asian society changing around him, like many he remains trapped in a world of poorly paid jobs that just about allow him to keep his head above water but ultimately lead him to murder a migrant worker from Bangladesh.

The question of why leads a young, privileged journalist to Ah Hock's door. While the victim has been mourned and the killer has served time for the crime, Ah Hock's motive remains unclear, even to himself. His vivid confession unfurls over extensive interviews with the journalist, herself a local whose life has taken a very different course. The process forces both the speaker and his listener to reckon with systems of power, race, and class in a place where success is promised to all yet delivered only to its lucky heirs.

An uncompromising portrait of an outsider navigating a society in transition, Tash Aw's anti-nostalgic tale, We, The Survivors, holds its tension to the very end. In the wake of loss and destruction, hope is among the survivors.

©2019 Tash Aw (P)2019 Penguin Random House Canada

Critic reviews

“Tash Aw’s new novel succeeds in achieving many feats: It is at once the great novel on today’s racism that we have been waiting for; a masterly fresco of South-East Asia, a region of the world that remains under-represented in literature; and a magnificent story of the social ascent of a man born into poverty, his dreams of becoming someone else, his battles, his shattered hopes, and, finally his downfall - a sort of The Red and the Black of our times, radical and contemporary. We, The Survivors is one of the most beautiful and powerful books I’ve read in years.” (Édouard Louis, author of Who Killed My Father)

“The ironically-titled We, the Survivors is the story of billions of human beings today - but not one reader. This is the tale of poor people - refugees, day laborers - whose lives are ruled by cruel circumstance and extreme poverty, whose struggles end in defeat, who are not meant to survive. What would be abstract in a report is here given burning, lacerated flesh. In the twenty-first century it is our Everyman, alas.” (Edmund White, author of The Unpunished Vice)

"Aw masterfully conveys his protagonist's specificity while also weaving together a larger picture of the class divisions, racial biases, unjust working conditions, and gender roles that pulse under the surface." (Kirkus Reviews)