Based on real events, Booker Prize-shortlisted Tan Twan Eng’s masterful novel of public morality and private truth examines love and betrayal under the shadow of Empire
The Garden of Evening Mists
Written by Tan Twan Eng
- Shortlisted
- The Man Booker Prize 2012
- Published by Canongate
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Tan Twan Eng’s second novel is a tantalisingly evocative mystery set in Malaya in the late 1940s, a country in recovery from the Second World War
Malay, 1949. Law graduate Yun Ling Teoh, the scarred lone survivor of a brutal Japanese wartime camp, seeks solace among the plantations of the Cameron Highlands. Here she discovers Yugiri, the only Japanese garden in Malaya, and its creator, the secretive Aritomo. He agrees to accept Yun Ling as his apprentice so that she can design her own garden as a memorial to her sister. But over time the jungle starts to reveal secrets of its own.
Tan Twan Eng
Tan Twan Eng was born in Penang, Malaysia, and worked as an advocate in one of Kuala Lumpur's leading law firms before becoming a full-time writer
More about Tan Twan Eng The Garden of Evening Mists on screen
In 2020, Tan Twan Eng’s novel was adapted into a film, also titled The Garden of Evening Mists.
It starred Sylvia Chang and Abe Hiroshi, and received nine nominations at the 56th Golden Horse Awards.
The Hollywood Reporter’s Elizabeth Kerr said the film ‘finds a way to tackle (however lightly) some thorny issues, maintaining a leisurely pace without ever becoming turgid’.
Other nominated books by Twan Eng Tan
Set in Malaya during World War II, Tan Twan Eng’s coming-of-age novel is a powerful story of divided loyalties, moral dilemmas and human courage
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