In a recent dialogue, novelist Tash Aw reflects on his imperative to embrace uncertainty in his latest work, The South, part of an ambitious quartet. He acknowledges a shift away from grand narratives, revealing initial ambitions to create an 800-page epic before recognizing this approach felt artificial and hyper-masculine. Aw expresses frustration with fiction that overly asserts certainty and authority, advocating for a narrative style that recognizes the complexity and unpredictability of life, thereby allowing readers and writers to explore ambiguities and multiple perspectives in storytelling.
I'd always conceived The South as this grand 800-page epic, but I realized I don't have the stamina for that anymore. It felt artificial to force it.
There's something very hyper-masculine about writing a book like that—contextualizing everything, assuming narrative authority when in fact, you don't understand it all.
I want to reverse that top-down understanding of an epic novel by building it from the bottom up, allowing room for ambiguity.
Ambiguity and suggestiveness have always been important to my fiction, but I've grown impatient with narratives that assert certainty too strongly.
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