Please join us on 17 April for a discussion of The Garden of Evening Mists by Tan Twang Eng.

"On a mountain above the clouds once lived a man who had been the gardener of the Emperor of Japan." It is impossible to resist the opening sentence of this elegant and haunting novel, first published in 2012. The book follows Teoh Yun Ling, a Straits Chinese, who was a prisoner in Japanese civilian internment camp in Malaya during World War II, and later becomes a judge overseeing war crime cases. Her sister, imprisoned with her, was forced to become a comfort woman and did not survive. After the war, Yun Ling wants to fulfill a promise she made to her sister to create a Japanese garden, and ends up as an apprentice to a Japanese gardener, Nakamura Aritomo in Cameron Highlands for several months during the Malayan Emergency in the early 1950s. Despite her bitter attitude toward the Japanese, she becomes close to Aritomo. It is revealed that Aritomo was involved in a program to hide looted treasures from occupied territories, but he never talks to Yun Ling about the treasures. Gradually it becomes clear that he might have left a clue to its location. After a walk, he mysteriously disappears in the highland mountains without any trace. Years later in the late 1980s, oncoming aphasia is forcing Yun Ling to deal with unsettled aspects from her past while she can still remember. She returns to Yugiri, the Garden of Evening Mists and begins writing her memoir, reliving her memories of Aritomo.

Tan Twang Eng was born in Penang, Malaysia. The Garden of Evening Mists won the Man Asian Literary Prize as well as the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction and was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize. He divides his time between Kuala Lumpur and Cape Town.

The book is available in Kindle and audiobook form on Amazon​.