The South
Tash Aw
HarperCollins: 2025
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Tash Aw has written five novels. His newest, The South, is the first to explicitly explore the homosexuality of Jay, a teenage Chinese Malaysian boy on the cusp of adulthood. The titular “South” is Johor, the southernmost state of Peninsular Malaysia. It’s connected, by a causeway, to Chinese-majority Singapore, where many Chinese Malaysians have settled for better economic opportunities. Bearing many traces of social and topographical unsettledness, Johor is the location of the boy’s burgeoning romance with Chuan—an older teenager and poorer relation.

Aw wastes little time to set the scene; the novel begins with Jay’s first sexual encounter with his object of desire. The description is brief, as brief as the sex itself—less than two minutes, by Jay’s estimation—yet it’s a moment that Jay, in his post-coital naïveté, believes will connect him and Chuan “forever”.

Such scenes from the book have placed Aw in the crosshairs of Malaysian censorship in recent months. While marketing the books longlisted for the 2025 Booker Prize, the Kuala Lumpur branch of Books Kinokuniya omitted The South, even though it’s the only title by a Malaysian author with a shot at the prestigious award this year. This was an act of self-censorship to shield the bookstore from the homophobic outcry that the novel had generated among local commentators some months prior. The fear of being perceived as promoting a local ‘gay novel’—in a country where same-sex intimacy is a crime and anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric is sanctioned by the state—proved too much for Books Kinokuniya to bear.

• Tags: Alicia Izharuddin, Issue 41, Malaysia, Tash Aw