FICTION: EILEEN BATTERSBYreviews Map Of The Invisible WorldBy Tash Aw, 4th Estate
'WHEN IT finally happened, there was no violence, hardly any drama. It was over quickly, and then Adam found himself alone once more." A young Indonesian boy goes in search of the Dutch painter who adopted him and has been arrested. The atmosphere is tense, the world has become chaotic and all Adam the boy can do, is search for the white woman his father once knew. Tash Aw's fluid, atmospheric second novel Map of the Invisible Worldis as exciting as it is skilful – and beautifully presented in a handsome, cartographical-style jacket.
It is a masterclass in the art of narrative; he is telling a story and all the while layering the history and pulling the pieces together. In addition to this is the shadow of having already written a terrific first novel, The Harmony Silk Factory(2005). This powerfully visual new book endorses that achievement because he has here succeeded in the impossible; he is making weighty political points about the damaging legacy of colonialism without ever falling into the easy rhetoric of polemic.
Indonesia, formerly known as the Dutch East Indies, is composed of hundreds of tropical islands in south-east Asia lying where the Pacific meets the Indian Ocean. It could be paradise; it is clearly a hell as each day festers with new upheaval. Karl, the man who chose Adam to be his son, took him from an orphanage. Karl has rejected Europe and even when Dutch people came once to his house, Adam recalls that Karl refused to converse with them in Dutch, instead he spoke English. “Karl is opposed to the speaking of Dutch in this house. He believes that it is the language of oppression and that Adam should not grow up absorbing the culture that colonised his own.”
Karl is eccentric but kind, a dreamer in love with his idea of Indonesia. Interestingly, Malaysian-born Tash Aw develops the character of Karl in snapshot sequences as recalled by Margaret, another of the major characters. She is the consummate outsider. Regarded as an American, she was born on a Pacific island to Americans preoccupied with the cultures of south-east Asia. Margaret appears to have had no childhood, as caught up in the distracted company of academic parents, she fends for herself. At 15 she had met Karl then 27, and felt she was in love. Margaret's story, a life lived in odd snatches, is brilliantly handled by Aw whose prose is cool, descriptive and understated. He drifts between tenses and evokes a world, a life in a couple of sentences. Readers who admired The Harmony Silk Factorywith its punchy candour will be impressed by the sophisticated, unshowy authority of this new novel.
Margaret, inspired according to Aw in an author’s acknowledgement by a real person, is a fascinating study in how a life can appear both planned and random. Her appearance obviously sets her apart, she is clearly a foreigner, yet her ability to speak the various languages, tends to both unsettle the natives as well as put them at ease. She always takes chances, even neglecting to wear a hat in the hot sun. As she walks the streets of Jakarta alone she becomes conscious of being followed. “Hey – Dutch? British? American? Give us money, US dollars.”
The scene develops as one boy stops her and accuses her of lying. Others appear. “. . . but she kept striving for the road, for the noise of the traffic. Someone reached out and touched her, a hot clammy hand on her bare forearm. Don’t run, she told herself, don’t run . . . She broke into a run, kicking up a cloud of dust . . . She was breathing hard; she could not remember the last time she had had to run . . . and when she reached the other side she looked across the square. Suddenly it seemed far away and unthreatening, shrouded in a veil of dust.” Later, she sits in a car terrified as a mob tramples over the roof and sees faces and hands climbing down the wind shield.
For the boy, Margaret means hope. And true to her nature she gets involved and helps. Adam is now sixteen and has lived with Karl for ten years. Suddenly Karl is gone, having been taken by soldiers.
Adam had a brother. Both boys had arrived at the orphanage together but Johan was adopted by a wealthy couple from Malaysia and taken to live there. His days are spent waiting for his nights of high speed entertainment.
AW describes Johan’s inertie: “What happened yesterday was just a dream; last week was forgotten, last month never existed at all. Every night was the same. Your life started afresh at six-thirty, repeating itself like a clock. There was no escape. It was always like that in this city.”
These sequences prove the least convincing in the book, largely because the other characters are so vividly drawn. Ironically, Din, a would-be-revolutionary who accuses young Adam of seeing "the world through a European's eyes" also assures the boy that Malaysia "a British construct" doesn't exist. "It is a work of pure fiction, created by the old imperialist countries to destabilise Indonesia and all the newly independent countries of the world. It was created so that Britain and America and their cronies can continue to have a presence in this region . . . their time is finished, finished!"
Along with her memories Margaret remains in contact with two men with whom she shares a past. They are also outsiders, one of them, Bill, is a US government official, while the once beautiful Mick is now a shabby journalist. The exchanges between the three suggest a shared world weariness. Still Margaret battles on, no longer young but not yet old.
Aw confers a likeable defiance on her that not only consolidates her character, it reinforces the novel. Throughout the narrative with its spins and bursts, its urgency and irony, is the abiding awareness of complex cultures. Margaret remembers her youth and the nights she would wake, unable to breathe, waiting for daylight: “These were the nights when the malevolent spirits walked the valleys, the people in the village said; there was dark magic in the air. . .”
Always in the background of the narrative, in the depths of her mind, is the tentative friendship with Karl. Tash Aw brings a world to life, makes his characters hope and dream in a second novel that not only matches an outstanding debut, it surpasses it.
- Map Of The Invisible WorldBy Tash Aw 4th Estate, 343pp, £16.99
Eileen Battersby is Literary Correspondent of
The Irish Times