Crushed by the Chinese dream
HONG KONG - When Chinese President Xi Jinping hails the "Chinese dream" as a "national rejuvenation for the Chinese people", he clearly does not have Tash Aw's latest (and most ambitious) novel in mind. In Aw's Five Star Billionaire , five vividly drawn characters, all outsiders who have recently arrived in China's throbbing financial capital of Shanghai, desperately search for love and riches amidst the city's towering skyscrapers and equally imposing dreams. There is Phoebe, the illegal migrant worker; Gary, the down-and-out former pop star; Yinghui, the one-time social activist turned hard-working businesswoman; Justin, the clinically depressed scion of a wealthy family in Kuala Lumpur; and Walter, who writes books about how to become a billionaire while pretending to be one himself. All of the characters, like Aw himself, are ethnic Chinese with roots in Malaysia, and each of them is brought convincingly to life as this 400-...