Review: The Face: Strangers On A Pier

Tash Aw’s face is, he tells us, perplexingly pan-Asian and ubiquitous. Everywhere he goes in Asia, people think he’s one of their own.

In Thailand, he gets spoken to in Thai. In Nepal they insist he must be Nepalese, too. In China, he’s bombarded with dialects from every region, as those of various ethnic Chinese regions see familiarity in his features.