Going South: Tash Aw on Inheritance, Identity, and Escape

This week Adam Biles speaks with Tash Aw about The South , his novel of inheritance, identity, and quiet upheaval. Set on a decaying farm in southern Malaysia, the story follows a family confronting generational fracture, class tension, and the uneasy weight of belonging. Aw explores how landscape is felt through the body rather than described, and how memory—fragmentary and unreliable—shapes narrative voice. The conversation covers adolescence, queer awakening, and the tension between freedom and fear when removed from social scrutiny. Aw reflects on writing from hindsight, the interplay between personal experience and fiction, and the ways families both sustain and constrain individual identity. Buy The South : * TASH AW is the author of five novels, including We, the Survivors , and a memoir of a Chinese-Malaysian family, The Face: Strangers on a Pier, both finalists for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. His work has also won a Whitbread Award, a Commonwealth Writers’ Prize, and an O. Henry Prize, and has three times been longlisted for the Man Booker Prize. His fiction has been translated into twenty-three languages. Adam Biles is Literary Director at Shakespeare and Company. Listen to Alex Freiman’s latest EP, In The Beginning: Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

You can listen to Going South: Tash Aw on Inheritance, Identity, and Escape online on Radio and Podcast. Open the player on this page to stream the available audio.

Going South: Tash Aw on Inheritance, Identity, and Escape is an episode from Shakespeare and Company by Shakespeare and Company.

This episode is 55:32 long.

This episode was published on Mar 23, 2026.

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