Tash Aw is a recent graduate of UEA. The Harmony Silk Factory is his first novel and was the winner of the Whitbread First Novel Award 2005 and Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best First Novel 2005, as well as being longlisted for the Man Booker Prize. He is currently working on his second novel, set in post-independence Malaysia and Indonesia. He is Malaysian by birth but now lives in London.