From a taxi ride in present-day Bangkok, to eating Kentucky Fried Chicken in 1980s Kuala Lumpur, to his grandfathers' treacherous boat journeys to Malaysia from mainland China in the 1920s, Tash Aw revels in the panoramic cultural vitality of modern Asia. A multilingual novelist now living in London, Aw weaves together stories of insiders and outsiders, images from rural villages and megacity night clubs, to capture the flavor of a world that is rapidly changing.