COUNTRY: MALAYSIA

THE GARDEN OF EVENING MISTS (2012) by Tan Twan Eng

SUMMARY:

The Garden of Evening Mists begins in 1980, as Judge Teoh Yun Ling announces her retirement.
She is younger than most judges when she retires, and this surprises her peers on Malaysia’s Supreme
Court. What she’s not telling anyone about her retirement is that she’s been diagnosed with a
degenerative neurological condition. She begins to forget words and have trouble articulating things,
and she knows that the disorder will invariably progress to the point where she can’t speak coherently
or even understand the spoken or written word. At this point, flashbacks show her childhood in the era
of World War Two. Ling was the third child of an affluent Malaysian family, but their life was completely
upended when the Japanese invaded their country. Malaysia was one of the first places the Japanese
invaded right after the attack on Pearl Harbor, and Ling and her parents fled the city along with her
sister, Yun Hong. However, they were caught by soldiers who brutally beat the girls’ parents and took
Ling and Hong captive along with a large group of child prisoners.

The girls were taken to a prison camp, where they were treated brutally. Hong, a beautiful girl,
was forced to work in the camp brothel where she was regularly raped by Japanese soldiers. Ling
realized that the only way to survive was to be useful, so she got a job in the camp kitchen, where she
was able to sneak out food to her sister. She was caught one day, and a cruel guard cut off two of her
gingers. Ling and Hong tried to stay positive by visualizing a beautiful Japanese garden that they once
saw on a trip, and by escaping the daily cruelty of their lives. After the camp’s interpreter died, an officer
named Tominaga Noburu made Ling his personal interpreter. He was kinder than most officers at the
camp, and when it became clear the Japanese were going to lose the war, he took her out of the camp
and told her to escape. She refused to leave Hong and tried to make her way back to the camp to rescue
her, but when she arrived she saw a massive explosion set by Tominaga and knew the camp would have
no survivors. She was found by an aboriginal boy who helped her to safety, and she immediately
volunteered her services to work in the post-war judicial system. She watched as Japanese officers were
tried for war crimes, and she desperately tried to find the location of the prison camp she was stationed
at so the prisoners could be properly buried.

Ling went to visit friends who owned a tea plantation and met a Japanese man named Aritomo.
He was the former gardener of the Emperor, and had an elaborate garden named Yugiri. Ling asked him
to create a garden in Hong’s memory, but he refused. He did, however, offer to teach her gardening so
she could do it herself. They slowly became friends, and one day he asked her for permission to give her
a horimono, a ceremonial tattoo that would cover her back. She agreed, and when he finished with the
design, he went for a walk in the woods and never returned, essentially leaving his house to Ling. She
stayed there for a while until she left to follow her passion in the law. The story then returns to the
present, as Ling heads to Yugiri after retirement. Although she generally turns anyone who visits away
from the garden, she agrees to hear out Professor Yoshikawa Tatsuji, a respected Japanese author. He
wants to write a book about Aritomo’s wood carvings. As they talk, Tatsuji reveals that he knows a lot
about Aritomo, including his role for the Japanese government as the man who would hide stolen
valuables. She realizes that Tatsuji believes she’s the key – the map on her back is the key to where he
hid the valuables. The garden itself holds many clues, and she knows that the time is right to change the
garden she’s preserved so carefully. She turns the garden into a memorial to both Aritomo and her
sister, and muses that one day she’ll walk into the woods and disappear, just like he did.

LITERARY GENRE: Novel, Historical Fiction

LITERARY CONTEXT:

 AUTHORIAL CONTEXT

Tan Twan Eng was born in Penang in 1972 and grew up in Malaysia. He worked as an
intellectual property lawyer in Kuala Lumpur.

He is the author of two novels, The Gift of Rain (2007), set in Penang before and during
the Japanese occupation of Malaya in World War II, longlisted for the 2007 Man Booker Prize for
Fiction; and The Garden of Evening Mists (2012), shortlisted for the 2012 Man Booker Prize for
Fiction. His novels have been translated into Spanish, Italian, Romanian, Greek, Serbian, Czech,
French, German, Dutch, Polish and Chinese.

Tan Twan Eng divides his time between Kuala Lumpur and Cape Town.