The Harmony Silk Factory

A landmark work of fiction from one of Britain’s most exciting new writers. The Harmony Silk Factory is a devastating love story set against the turmoil of mid-twentieth century Malaysia. Set in Malaysia in the 1930s and 40s, with the rumbling of the Second World War in the background and the Japanese about to invade, The Harmony Silk Factory tells the story of four characters: Johnny, an infamous Chinaman – a salesman, a fraudster, possibly a murderer – whose shop house, The Harmony Silk Factory, he uses as a front for his illegal businesses; Snow Soong, the beautiful daughter of one of the Kinta Valley’s most prominent families, who dies giving birth to one of the novel’s narrators; Kunichika, a Japanese officer who loves Snow; and Peter Wormwood, an Englishman who came to Malaysia like many others but never returned, and also loved Snow. Their journey into the jungle has a devastating effect on all of them and exposes the cultural tensions of the era. Haunting, highly original, The Harmony Silk Factory is suspenseful to the last page.