Five Star Billionaire

By: Tash Aw

Narrated by: Robertson Dean

Phoebe is a factory girl who has come to Shanghai with the promise of a job - but when she arrives she discovers that the job doesn't exist. Gary is a country boy turned pop star who is spinning out of control. Justin is in Shanghai to expand his family's real estate empire, only to find that he might not be up to the task. He has long harbored a crush on Yinghui, a poetry-loving, left-wing activist who has reinvented herself as a successful Shanghai businesswoman. Yinghui is about to make a deal with the shadowy Walter Chao, the five star billionaire of the novel, who with his secrets and his schemes has a hand in the lives of each of the characters. All bring their dreams and hopes to Shanghai, the shining symbol of the New China, which, like the story's characters, is constantly in flux and which plays its own fateful role in the lives of its inhabitants.

Five Star Billionaire is a dazzling, kaleidoscopic audiobook that offers rare insight into the booming world of Shanghai, a city of elusive identities and ever-changing skylines, of grand ambitions and outsize dreams. Bursting with energy, contradictions, and the promise of possibility, Tash Aw's remarkable new audiobook is both poignant and comic, exotic and familiar, cutting-edge and classic, suspenseful and yet beautifully unhurried.

©2013 Tash Aw (P)2013 Tantor

Critic reviews

"A literary victory...Aw moves fluidly between past and present, creating a multilayered narrative about chasing, catching, and sometimes losing elusive opportunities." ( Library Journal Starred Review)

Great flow

I did not expect to enough this book as much as I did. I did not quite like there ending but it reminded me of the Japanese style novels that don't really spoon feed an ending to you.

The narrator was very good. However, I do feel that he should have invested a little more time perfecting house pronunciation of colloquial Chinese and Malay words. There are many apps and websites that can assist IBM this age and time.

Loved loved this book

I love the characters, I could totally picture Shanghai, I remember Malaya in the 1960s when I was there for a couple of years. The Chinese characters seem true to life to me and from what I see Southeast Asia went through enormous change. There’s a cynicism in this book that’s pervasive but I presume it’s based on the realities of life for people in those rapidly changing countries. China Malaysia Singapore. My only criticism is that I felt the reader did not pronounce some of the names Correctly such as Kelantan, and Trengganu and a couple of other words... at least it seemed to me.
But over all, Listening to this book was an excellent experience. Tash Aw is a insightful observer of human motivation

Editor or Publisher maybe mentally ill writer

Would you try another book from Tash Aw and/or Robertson Dean?

No. It looks like the editor or publisher did a hatchet job on the story line. It was told so disjointed. Some good information, but inserted in the wrong place at times. Some one should have proofed the story line. It was poorly put together? The writer is unstable like Justin and Yum yum!

Has Five Star Billionaire turned you off from other books in this genre?

What genre? Historical, philosophical romance, really!

Who would you have cast as narrator instead of Robertson Dean?

Dean was working with what was there. I would not have published this in the current state of continuity.

You didn’t love this book... but did it have any redeeming qualities?

There were some very valuable life lessons, but the story line did not flow. I had to replay it several time because I did not know what the dam subject line was.

Any additional comments?

Ah!