“The Harmony Silk Factory” is divided into three parts, each with a different narrator, set in different time periods. Johnny’s son, Jasper, narrates the first part in the present day, prompted by Johnny’s funeral. Via her diary, Johnny’s wife, Snow, narrates the second part, set early in their marriage, before Jasper’s birth and her death. Johnny’s English friend Peter narrates the third section; it is set in an invalid home where the now-elderly man lives, but much of it recounts the earlier events of the book.
Jasper feels only bitterness and anger toward his father; The Guardian’s book reviewer, Alfred Hickling, describes his depiction of Johnny as “an assassination.” In this section, readers learn of Johnny’s rise to power as both a merchant and a criminal, and his wartime betrayal of his friends. Peter has been Johnny’s only friend, and his portrait adds layers of vulnerability and intellectual sensitivity to the brutality of Jasper’s view. The expatriate is a dissolute, regretful man. Snow is the most enigmatic character; very young, naïve and beautiful, she does not understand Johnny at all, finding him enigmatic. Peter reveals, later, that he has been in love with her all these years, although she has been dead since Jasper’s birth.
Aw, who was born in Taipei, Taiwan, grew up in Malaysia, where he set the novel. Ethnic Chinese, like Aw’s real-life family and his fictional Lim clan, make up just over a quarter of the population but dominate in terms of economic influence. The Kinta Valley, where the title factory stands, is a former mining hub that experienced economic decline starting in the 1980s. Although it is starting to rebound, according to Malaysian journalist James Wong Wing On, the troubled economic history of the region is an important undercurrent for Jasper’s frustration.
One of the book’s abiding metaphors is, as the title hints, silk. As Anita Sethi, reviewer for The Independent, explains, memory is like silk, “spun out of nothing.” Much of the book’s power comes from the narrators’ memories. Just as the colors of silk appear to shift as the fabric moves, so the portrait of Johnny shifts with each narrator’s account; Peter compares silk to a chameleon, and the same comparison could be made of Johnny himself. Silk also serves as a metaphor for binding and connections, though a slippery one. Other metaphors include Peter’s garden, a futile attempt to reclaim order out of fertile chaos, and water, which recurs in various forms, including oppressive tropical rain and clear bodies for swimming.