The Garden Of Evening Mists – Tan Twan Eng

499.00

An “elegant and haunting novel of war, art and memory” (The Independent)

Winner of the Man Asian Literary Prize

Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize

Out of stock

Description

Malaya, 1951. Yun Ling Teoh, the scarred lone survivor of a brutal Japanese wartime camp, seeks solace among the jungle-fringed tea plantations of Cameron Highlands. There she discovers Yugiri, the only Japanese garden in Malaya, and its owner and creator, the enigmatic Aritomo, exiled former gardener of the emperor of Japan. Despite her hatred of the Japanese, Yun Ling seeks to engage Aritomo to create a garden in memory of her sister, who died in the camp. Aritomo refuses but agrees to accept Yun Ling as his apprentice “until the monsoon comes.” Then she can design a garden for herself.

As the months pass, Yun Ling finds herself intimately drawn to the gardener and his art, while all around them a communist guerilla war rages. But the Garden of Evening Mists remains a place of mystery. Who is Aritomo and how did he come to leave Japan? And is the real story of how Yun Ling managed to survive the war perhaps the darkest secret of all?

About the Author

Tan Twan Eng was born in Penang and lived in various places in Malaysia as a child. He studied law at the University of London and later worked as lawyer in one of Kuala Lumpur’s most reputable law firms; in 2016, he was an International Writer-in-Residence at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. Tan’s first novel, The Gift of Rain (2007), was long-listed for the Man Booker Prize and has been translated into Italian, Spanish, Greek, Romanian, Czech and Serbian. The Garden of Evening Mists (2011), his second novel, won the Man Asian Literary Prize and Walter Scott Prize, and was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize and the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award.

Tan Twan Eng lives in Cape Town where he is working on his third novel.