The Garden of Evening Mists

Malaysian author Tan Twan Eng, born in Penang, Malaysia, divides his time between Kuala Lumpur and Cape Town. THE GARDEN OF EVENING MISTS is his second novel: his debut was the highly respected and awarded THE GIFT OF RAIN. Eng’s sensitivity to his readers is evident in an author’s note at book’s end: ’With the exception of the obvious historical figures, all characters in the novel sprang from my imagination. The visit of Sir Gerald Templer and his wife to Majuba Tea Estate and Yugiri is fictional. The Malayan Emergency ended in July 1960, twelve years after it began. With the combined efforts of local security forces, civilians and troops from the Commonwealth, Malaya was one of the few countries in the world to defeat a communist insurgency. Noel Barber in his book The War of the Running Dogs called it “the world’s first struggle against guerrilla Communism. I am grateful to Tristan Beauchamp Russell for describing to me what life on his tea estate in Cameron Highlands was like during the Malayan Emergency.’ In keeping with the eloquent tonality of his first novel, Eng opens this book with a stunningly seductive aperitif: ‘On a mountain above the clouds once lived a man who had been the gardener of the emperor of Japan. Not many people would have known of him before the war, but I did. He had left his home on the rim of the sunrise to come to the central highlands of Malaya. I was seventeen years old when my sister first told me about him. A decade would pass before I traveled up to the mountains to see him. He did not apologize for what his countrymen had done to my sister and me. Not on that rain-scratched morning when we first met, nor at any other time. What words could have healed my pain, returned my sister to me? None. And he understood that. Not many people did.' Eng’s novel unveils an aspect of world history and wars about which few of us are familiar – the Japanese occupation of Malaya, post war the Malayan Emergency, and the rise of the independent Malaya. The novel is breathtaking not only in the themes but also in the eloquence of Eng’s writing. A detailed synopsis is helpful to the first time Eng reader - “Newly retired Supreme Court Judge Teoh Yun Ling returns to the Cameron Highlands of Malaya, where she had spent a few months several years earlier. Oncoming aphasia is forcing her to deal with unsettled business from her youth while she is still able to remember. She starts writing her memoir and agrees to meet with Japanese professor Yoshikawa Tatsuji. Tatsuji is interested in the life and works of artist Nakamura Aritomo, who used to be the Japanese Emperor's gardener but moved to this area to build his own garden. During the Japanese occupation of Malaya, Yun Ling was in a Japanese civilian internment camp with her sister, Yun Hong. Yun Hong did not make it out alive, and after the war was over, Yun Ling decided to fulfil a promise made to her sister: to build a Japanese garden in their home in Kuala Lumpur. She travelled to the highlands to visit family friend Magnus Pretorius, an ex-patriate South African tea farmer who knew Aritomo. Aritomo refused to work for Yun Ling but agreed to take her on as an apprentice, so she could later build her own garden. Despite her resentment against the Japanese, Yun Ling agreed to work for Aritomo and later became his lover. During the conversations with Tatsuji, it comes out that Aritomo was involved in a covert Japanese program during the war, to hide looted treasures from occupied territories. The rumors of this so-called "Golden Lily" program were widespread, and Magnus was killed trying to save his family from the Communist guerillas who came looking for the gold. Aritomo never talked about the treasure to Yun Ling, but gradually it becomes clear that he might have left a clue to its location. Before he disappeared into the jungle, he made a horimono tattoo on her back. It now appears this tattoo might contain a map to the location of the treasure. Yun Ling decides that, before she dies, she must ensure that no one will be able to get their hands on her body or the map. In the meantime, she sets out to restore Aritomo's dilapidated garden.’ The book is cinematic and yet often so mist shrouded that film may not be able to convey all levels of meaning. This is one of the great novels of the past decade and deserves wide readership. Grady Harp, October 17

This is a tale of war and loss. The central character is a Chinese Malaysian daughter of a wealthy rubber trader. She and her sister are taken as teenagers in the 1940s to a Japanese labor camp, where she is initially forced into a brutal mining operation and her sister becomes a “comfort woman” for Japanese guards. Eventually, her knowledge of English allows her to become a translator for one of the Japanese officials of the camp and she is allowed to escape the destruction of the camp and murder of all its remaining prisoners at the end of the war, the sole survivor. The second part of her story is her plan to build a Japanese garden in honor of her sister. To that end, she moves to a tea plantation to become an apprentice and eventual lover of a man who is a prominent artist and was once a gardener to the Japanese emperor. This is the period of the communist insurgency in Malaya, another time of great strife and brutality. After the disappearance of her Japanese lover she goes to England to get a law degree and follow a career as an important judge in independent Malaysia. As she reaches her 60s, she is diagnosed with a neurological condition that will rob her of memory and functions. So she returns to the tea plantation to write about her experiences and honor her Japanese mentor by rebuilding his garden and studying his other artistic efforts. The above is a linear narrative of her story, but the novel does not unfold as a linear narrative. Instead, it progresses as a memory narrative, in fits and starts, jumping from one period to another. This approach provides a source of power to the story, but makes it a more difficult read, as the transitions are often abrupt and unanticipated. It is not a story for a casual read. This is the second novel by this author that I have read, both about the Japanese occupation of Malaya and its consequences. This book is more lyrical and mysterious and well worth reading for both its historical value and its unfolding of the various Asian mentalities, always a source of mystery to Americans. There have been a lot of novels recently concerned with WWII occupations, describing their brutality and psychology. A central issue has been how the Germans and Japanese, people associated with cultures of beauty and order, could have been involved in such cruelty. Aside from the “master race” argument, there have been few concrete answers, but the question is well worth continuing consideration to avoid its repetition.

The package arrived on time, book is new and clean. It's a very interesting read. Can recommend.

I loved this book. It was so beautifully written; It was a discovery into the history of Penang and the suffering its people.

THE GARDEN OF EVENING MISTS BY TAN TWAN ENG ‘The Garden Of Evening Mists’ is a truly wonderful novel. Similar to the brilliance of ‘The Gift Of Rain’ penned by this unique author, this story of Judge Teoh; Yun Ling will stay with me forever. Yun Ling has returned after almost four decades, to a place of mystique and intrigue. She has recently resigned from her 14 year job in the Supreme Court based in Kuala Lumpur, just two years short of when she was due to retire. Her mind has been invaded now by a trespasser; aphasia, so Yun Ling decides she must write everything down before it is too late; “My memories will be like a sand-bar, cut off from the shore by the incoming tide” ‘Without memory a ghost trapped between worlds, without identity, no future, no past” And so begins her recollection of her time spent with Aritomo in Yugiri; The Garden Of Evening Mists…. Yun Ling has known great suffering and pain in her life and her hatred for the Japanese invaders who imprisoned her and her sister is sustained throughout her life. Yugiri is the place she returns to where she first met with Aritomo, ‘the emperor’s gardener.’ Despite her disdain of the Japanese; she seeks the brilliance of Aritomo to build a very special garden in memory of her lost sister. He declines her request and instead he asks Yun Ling to become his apprentice. She begins her apprenticeship with Aritomo and she observes him: “He was similar to the boulders….only a small portion was revealed to the world, the rest buried deep within, hidden from view.” Aritomo speaks often through metaphor. His appreciation for nature enables him to continuously draw a parallel between life struggling inside and outside the garden. “We are like every single plant and stone and view in the garden; the distance between one another carefully measured” Close by, on the Majuba Tea Estate, friends are treasured, and over the years Yun Ling and Aritomo spend many evenings enjoying the hospitality of their neighbours; Magnus and Emily. Frederik who is a relative of Magnus, grows very fond of Yun Ling and his devotion to her never waivers. The stories told from the different characters about their experiences in time of war and emergency truly enlighten the reader enabling many perspectives to be considered and ultimately judged…. The mysteries of this intriguing novel are slowly revealed and just like the Horimono Artist or Horoshi; the author has left significant space for reader intelligence to be complete. Tan Twan Eng is an incredible sensitive author and this book is graced with so many wonderful quotes I cannot wait to reread it again and again. It is an emotionally charged, intelligent read. The book is significantly informative and deals so beautifully with the complex world of human relationships. The novel casts dark shadows on the treachery and cruelty of nations at war and then brings redemption in the incredible resilience of the human heart and spirit. This is a book I would highly recommend and I would score this book 10+ out of a possible 10.

Good book

Tan Twan Eng's, The Garden of Evening Mists, is as hauntingly beautiful as the opaque and delicate mist. It's multi dimensional characters are etched with finesse, with each, holding their stories, competently. War, it's aftermath of pain, anger, hatred, the entrenched biases of the conquerors and oppressed; The delicate beauty, flow, planning and structure of a Japanese garden, the goddesses of memory and forgetting; The power, skill and speech of the art and the artist, language of tattoos, sketches, archery; The guilt of abandonment and escape, the compromise for fulfillment of promises; Tan Twan Eng's world stitches them all in a gripping account, set in the expanse of the lush, sprawling tea gardens in Malay, contextualising the Japanese occupation of Malay and the Malayan emergency. The protagonists are distinctive, representative of the ethos of the times of it's setting. A must read!