Tash Aw - Map of the Invisible World

My thanks and gratitude to my agent, David Godwin, for his vision and matchless enthusiasm; and to Kerry Glencorse, Heather Godwin, Sophie Hoult, and Charlotte Knight at DGA, for their tireless support.

Beatrice Monti von Rezzori provided me with a room with a view and six weeks of calm at Santa Maddalena, which helped revive this novel — thank you.

Cindy Spiegel in New York, Lara Hinchberger in Toronto, and Anne O’Brien in London all made valuable editorial comments on the manuscript, for which I am extremely grateful.

The conversations I had with Judith Sihombing on her life in Jakarta in the 1960s helped to bring me closer to the novel. I owe Margaret’s character (and much else) to Judith.

Kadek Krishnan Adidharma and Nukila Amal — brilliant poets and translators — performed wonders with Hartini . My admiration and gratitude know no bounds.

Thanks to Adam Thirlwell, Clare Allan, and Diana Evans for chats and coffee breaks; to James Arnold and Alistair Griffin, for dinners and occasional lodging; to Francis Hétroy for la douceur de vivre; to Philip Goff for commenting.

And finally, thanks to my parents, for their support and understanding.

TASH AW’s debut novel, The Harmony Silk Factory , was the winner of the Whitbread First Novel Award and the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best First Novel and was long-listed for the Man Booker Prize. He is Malaysian by birth but now lives in London.