Map of the Invisible World: A Novel
Page 38
Acknowledgments
I am greatly indebted to Nicholas Pearson, as sensitive and wise an editor as any writer could hope for; his hand-holding helped me weather numerous storms. Thanks, also, to everyone at Fourth Estate and HarperCollins worldwide, especially Michelle Kane.
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.
About the Author
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.
Map of the Invisible World is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2009 by Tash Aw
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Spiegel & Grau,
an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group,
a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
SPIEGEL & GRAU and Design is a registered trademark of Random House, Inc.
Originally published in the United Kingdom by Fourth Estate, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers, London, in 2009.
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Aw, Tash.
Map of the invisible world: a novel / Tash Aw.
p. cm.
eISBN: 978-1-58836-983-3
1. Orphans—Fiction. 2. Brothers—Fiction. 3. Indonesia—Politics and government—1950–1966—Fiction. I. Title.
PR6101.W2M37 2009
823?.92—dc22 2009012843
[http://www.spiegelandgrau.com] www.spiegelandgrau.com
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