The Garden of Evening Mists by Tan Twan Eng

Magnus’s tea plantation is a quiet oasis of culture and art.

In the Cameron Highlands just after the war, Yun Ling reconnects with old family friends Magnus, a Boer who hails from South Africa, and his Chinese wife, Emily. Even as a prisoner, Yun Hong is quick to point out that the sensibility that created these amazing gardens is a universe away from the monsters running their camp. From this point, we read a series of flashbacks: first World War II and then the 12 years of the Malayan Emergency, from 1948 to 1960.Īs a teenager, Yun Ling lived through the horrors of the Japanese invasion, enduring the war years in a ghastly prison camp with her sister, Yun Hong, who despite the awful cruelty of the Japanese soldiers, developed a passion for Japanese gardens.

It’s a remote and beautiful region filled with tea plantations and the country’s only Japanese garden. The story is told by Yun Ling Teoh, an older woman of great dignity, whom we first see as she retires from a dozen years on the Malayan Supreme Court to return to the Cameron Highlands, the tropical rain forest where she grew up. The plot is fascinating and, of course, complex. “ The Garden of Evening Mists,” a finalist for this year’s Man Booker Prize, plumbs the basics of human nature as it asks how we can commit so many atrocities in a time of war and, at the same time, create compelling, transcendent works of art. Tan Twan Eng, whose first book, “ The Gift of Rain,” was received with critical acclaim, here examines those years in a complex society that includes Chinese, South African Dutch and English as well as aborigines. But the Garden of Evening Mists is also a place of mystery.Soon after the ravages of World War II, Malaya was wracked by a communist guerrilla insurgency, which was eventually put down in 1960. As the months pass, Yun Ling finds herself intimately drawn to her sensei and his art while, outside the garden, the threat of murder and kidnapping from the guerrillas of the jungle hinterland increases with each passing day.

Then she can design a garden for herself. Aritomo refuses, but agrees to accept Yun Ling as his apprentice 'until the monsoon comes'. Despite her hatred of the Japanese, Yun Ling seeks to engage Aritomo to create a garden in Kuala Lumpur, in memory of her sister who died in the camp. 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.

After studying law at Cambrige and time spent helping to prosecute Japanese war criminals, Yun Ling Teoh, herself the scarred lone survivor of a brutal Japanese wartime camp, seeks solace among the jungle fringed plantations of Northern Malaya where she grew up as a child.

The Garden of Evening Mists by Tan Twan Eng