''Five Star Billionaire'' is a novel by

Tash Aw Tash Aw, whose full name is Aw Ta-Shi (; born 4 October 1971) is a Malaysian writer living in London. Biography Born in 1971 in Taipei, Taiwan, to Malaysian parents, Tash Aw returned to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, at the age of two, and grew up t ...

, published in 2013. It was longlisted for the

Man Booker Prize for Fiction The Booker Prize, formerly known as the Booker Prize for Fiction (1969–2001) and the Man Booker Prize (2002–2019), is a literary prize awarded each year for the best novel written in English and published in the United Kingdom or Ireland. ...

2013 Man Booker Prize The 2013 Booker Prize for Fiction was awarded on 15 October 2013 to Eleanor Catton for her novel ''The Luminaries''. A longlist of thirteen titles was announced on 23 July, and these were narrowed down to a shortlist of six titles, announced on 10 S ...

, Aw's first nomination.

Content

A series of narratives cover the experiences of five

Malaysian Chinese Malaysian Chinese (; Malay: ''Orang Cina Malaysia''), alternatively Chinese Malaysians, are Malaysian citizens of Han Chinese descent. They form the second largest ethnic group after the Malay majority constituting 22.4% of the Malaysian po ...

expats attempting to settle in Shanghai in pursuit of financial opportunities.

Reviews

Writing for ''

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Gu ...

'', Aminatta Forna wrote...

''Even where the narrative takes a dramatic turn, it is delivered in Aw's spare, fresh, cool, almost dispassionate prose, which though it succeeds in many ways somehow never quite leaves the page. Instead the characters drift towards their various destinies, caught in the whirlpool of Shanghai. There's more than a hint of fatalism in the air.''

Jan Stuart, writing for ''

The Boston Globe ''The Boston Globe'' is an American daily newspaper founded and based in Boston, Massachusetts. The newspaper has won a total of 27 Pulitzer Prizes, and has a total circulation of close to 300,000 print and digital subscribers. ''The Boston Glob ...

'' wrote...

''Tash’s ever-spiraling web of connections is as improbable as it is entertaining, but he knits his various threads with an elegance that, coupled with a photorealistic eye for the minutiae of urban life, can distract us from the holes that accumulate over his attenuated narrative...When it comes to deception, in the world according to Tash, two’s a crowd.''

References

External links

The New York Times review
2013 novels Malaysian novels Novels by Tash Aw English-language novels Novels set in Shanghai Fourth Estate books {{2010s-novel-stub