Tash Aw - The Harmony Silk Factory

just finished the book... very interesting read... enjoyed it... great first novel by a Malaysian writer...

a couple of extracts from the book that impressed me...

on Malaysia's national flower, the hibiscus bunga raya:
'Most botanists think that particular strain of hisbiscus originated from China, hence its common name, Chinese rose. No one knows for sure, though but who cares? It looks like some strange half-evaginated hermaphrodite genitalia, gloriously labial with a thin stamen that droops like a failed phallus -- the whole thing desperately vulgar.'

on death:
'Death, I believe, erases everything. It erases all traces of the life that once existed, completely and for ever. Of course we help it in its task -- we're the ones who do the forgetting.'

there are a lot of times that I wished that my ex had left me because of death... it could have been easier handling that... than infidelity...

or maybe not...