Uploaded September 2026 | Updated September 2026, 1 day ago
Tash Aw and Tahmima Anam trace fragile inheritances, restless bodies and fractured belonging in landscapes scorched and salt-laced. In conversation with Somnath Batabyal, they explore resistance, displacement and the pull of the “South”—where land, memory and identity blur, and private lives collide with larger, unsettling transformations.
Tash Aw is the author of five novels, most recently The South, and a memoir, Strangers on a Pier, which explores a Chinese-Malaysian family. His work has received the Whitbread and Commonwealth Prizes, as well as an O. Henry Award, and he has been shortlisted three times for the Man Booker Prize. His novels have been translated into 26 languages.
Tahmima Anam is the author of the Bengal trilogy and a recipient of the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best First Book and the O. Henry Award. She is a Granta Best of Young British Novelist and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. Born in Dhaka, Bangladesh, she trained as an anthropologist at Harvard University and now lives in London.
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Tash Aw and Tahmima Anam trace fragile inheritances, restless bodies and fractured belonging in landscapes scorched and salt-laced. In conversation with Somnath Batabyal, they explore resistance, displacement and the pull of the “South”—where land, memory and identity blur, and private lives collide with larger, unsettling transformations.
Tash Aw is the author of five novels, most recently The South, and a memoir, Strangers on a Pier, which explores a Chinese-Malaysian family. His work has received the Whitbread and Commonwealth Prizes, as well as an O. Henry Award, and he has been shortlisted three times for the Man Booker Prize. His novels have been translated into 26 languages.
Tahmima Anam is the author of the Bengal trilogy and a recipient of the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best First Book and the O. Henry Award. She is a Granta Best of Young British Novelist and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. Born in Dhaka, Bangladesh, she trained as an anthropologist at Harvard University and now lives in London.
Follow us on –
Website - jlflitfest.org
Facebook - facebook.com/JLFInternational
YouTube - youtube.com/@JLFInternational
Instagram - instagram.com/jlfinternational
X - twitter.com/JLFLitfest
#literature #jlflondon










