He was also previously longlisted for the 2007 Man Booker award for his debut novel, The Gift of Rain. Obviously he is a writer of exceptional talent. Tan Twan Eng is only the second English language writer to win the Man Asian Literary Prize. The other being Miguel Syjuco for Ilustrado (M) in 2008.
The Garden of Evening Mists (M)
by Tan Twan Eng
"As intricately designed as a Japanese garden, this deceptively quiet
novel resonates with the power to inspire a variety of passionate
emotions. Reflecting back on her life as a neurological disease
threatens to erase her memories, retired Chinese-Malaysian judge Teoh
Yun Ling reveals, layer by layer, the horrors she and her sister
experienced during the war when they were interred in a Japanese
slave-labor camp.
As the sisters attempt to mentally escape by immersing
themselves in intricate recollections of the Japanese gardens they once
visited, the brutality of their reality increases daily. After the war,
Yun Ling appeals to Nakamura Aritomo, the exiled former gardener to the
emperor of Japan to design a garden in her sister's memory. Instead,
she becomes Aritomo's apprentice and eventually his lover. It is many
years before all of her own secrets and those of Aritomo are revealed,
for nothing is as simple as it initially appears in the Garden of
Evening Mists. A haunting novel certain to stay with the reader long
after the book is closed." - BooklistThe other shortlisted novels are:
by Orhan Pamuk (Turkey)
Narcopolis (M)
by Jeet Thayil (India)
Between Clay and Dust
by Musharraf Ali Farooqi (Pakistan)
The Briefcase
by Hiromi Kawakami (Japan)
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