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The Garden of Evening Mists [Kindle Edition]

Tan Twan Eng (Author)

4.4 out of 5 stars See all reviews (327 customer reviews)

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Length: 354 pages (Contains Real Page Numbers)
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Product Description

Review

Just as elegantly planted as his Man Booker longlisted debut The Gift of Rain, and even more tantalisingly evocative --The Independent

Book Description

The internation bestseller, winner of the Man Asian Literary Prize 2012 and the 2013 Walter Scott Prize for historical fiction and shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2012

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Product details

Format: Kindle Edition
File Size: 2278 KB
Print Length: 354 pages
Page Numbers Source ISBN: 1782110186
Publisher: Canongate Books; Main edition (2 May 2013)
Sold by: Amazon Media EU S.� r.l.
Language: English
ASIN: B00BJKYM8G
Text-to-Speech: Enabled

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Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars See all reviews (327 customer reviews)

Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #518 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)

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More About the Author

› Visit Amazon's Tan Twan Eng Page

Tan Twan Eng was born in Penang, Malaysia. He divides his time between Kuala Lumpur and Cape Town.

The Gift of Rain, his first novel, was Longlisted for the Man Booker Prize. It has been translated into Italian, Spanish, Greek, Romanian, Czech and Serbian.

His latest novel is The Garden of Evening Mists, shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2012. Boyd Tonkin in The Independent called it

'an elegant and haunting novel of art and war and memory...Tan writes with breath-catching poise and grace, linguistic refinement and searching intelligence...His fictional garden cultivates formal harmony -but also undermines it. It unmasks sophisticated artistry as a partner of pain and lies. This duality invests the novel with a climate of doubt; a mood - as with Aritomo's creation - of "tension and possibility". Its beauty never comes to rest.'

It has been translated/will be translated into German, French, Italian, Serbian, Spanish, Dutch, Polish, Taiwanese Chinese, Indonesian, Korean and Norwegian.

The Garden of Evening Mists won the Man Asian Literary Prize in March 2013.

In June it won the Walter Scott Prize 2013, from a shortlist of authors which included Hilary Mantel, Rose Tremain, Thomas Keneally, Pat Barker and Anthony Quinn.

The Garden of Evening Mists was also shortlisted for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award 2014.

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Customer Reviews

4.4 out of 5 stars

4.4 out of 5 stars

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

78 of 80 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Evocative and profound. 1 Jun 2012

By Columba

Format:Paperback

I found this second novel by Tan Twan Eng both absorbing and extraordinarily enriching. His hero is a woman. He writes in the first person singular and is obviously very much in touch with the female aspect of his psyche which adds to the authenticity of his plot.

I loved his first novel, 'The Gift of Rain,' and this one has an even greater profundity. I like especially the way in which he connects the past memories of his hero, Judge Teoh Yun Ling, with her present existence.

The real subject of the story is a Japanese Gardener, Nakamura Aritomo. He had once been the gardener of the Emperor of Japan. Yun Ling's story is intimately connected with Aritomo and the unique relationship between the two. There are several interesting characters and each plays a vital part in the unfolding of the story.

On the very first page Tan Twan Eng writes,

- "Thirty-six years after that morning, I hear his voice again, hollow and resonant. Memories I had locked away began to break free, like shards of ice fracturing off an arctic shelf. In sleep these broken floes drift towards the morning light of remembrance."

That's a marvellous paragraph and immediately hooked me on the story. Its a beautiful book full of wonderful and moving images as well as being an intriguing read.

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93 of 97 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars beautiful and sensitively written 26 Jun 2012

By Caroline

Format:Paperback

Having so enjoyed his first book, I started reading this one with great anticipation. I was not disappointed. His main character, a woman judge who has been tortured by the Japanese when they invaded Penang, approaches the former gardener to the Emperor of Japan, wanting him to make her a Japanese garden in memory of her sister.

His writing is magical and he paints vivid pictures of the Malaysian jungle near Cameron Heights. His introduces a longstanding family friend who is a survivor of the Boer War. Like the Judge he has experienced loss as his family was put in a concentration camp by the British. The battle for independence and the fight against communism also adds further depth to this fascinating story, which is wonderfully crafted throughout.

A must read.

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44 of 46 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Total magic 9 Sep 2012

By antony mair

Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase

In this wonderful book we are plunged into the Far East, and the conflicts between Malays, Chinese and Japanese. Against a background of total savagery in and after the Second World War there is a tale of love and forgiveness that unfolds with the slow inevitability of the garden that is the centrepiece of the book. The two central characters - a former gardener to the Emperor of Japan and the Malayan Chinese prosecutor of Japanese war criminals, who subsequently becomes a judge - are portrayed with astonishing sensitivity, as is the setting in the Cameron Highlands. I loved every single minute of it, and now know where I want to go on my next holiday!

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47 of 50 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Images that haunt the imagination and a great story to match 27 July 2012

By Tim Murgatroyd

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

For me, Tan Twan Eng's 'The Gift Of Rain' became one of those books that enter your subconscious on some level and keeps popping back into your mind. It was partly due to the evocative descriptions, partly the complexities of the central character. So when I bought my copy of 'Garden Of Evening Mists' I thought it unlikely he could achieve the same success twice. However, Tan Twan Eng has proved himself a genuine artist once again. The narrator is intriguing all the way through to the book's ending (which, by the way, carries a surprising twist and punch unusual in a so-called 'literary' novel). There is an air of beautiful sadness to some parts of the story. Again, the descriptions of the Malayan highlands are layered with deeper nuances, just as they were when Tan Twan Eng described the island of Penang in 'Gift Of Rain'. Finally, there are timeless (and some horrible) moral dilemmas swirling round this book like the mists round the eponymous garden. Dilemmas for the characters that made this reader, at least, think about the hard choices people face in the world. Tan isn't a prolific writer and reading his novel reveals why: every word counts.

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8 of 8 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Above Prizes? 1 Jan 2013

By Antenna TOP 500 REVIEWER

Format:Paperback

A Chinese Malayan by birth, Judge Teoh Yun Ling retires to the house at Yugiri in the Cameron Highlands and the "Garden of Evening Mists" developed by the enigmatic Nakamura Aritomo, sometime gardener to the Emperor of Japan. Since she has suffered brutal treatment and lost her sister in a Japanese camp during World War 2, one is curious to learn how she managed to form a bond with Aritomo before his death. Shifting back and forth in time, the story is an account of her recollections, revealing some kind of truth layer by layer, as she follows a friend's advice and attempts to capture her memories before the aphasia with which she has been diagnosed destroys her mind, making her a stranger even to herself.

At first, I was put off by the cumbersome opening chapter, the dwelling on small details, the slow pace and the writer's preoccupation with metaphors which, although sometimes striking, too often seem clunky and distracting, even unintentionally comical - "the waterwheel dialled ceaselessly" and so on.

Then I became hooked by Tan Twan Eng's exquisite poetical descriptions of the garden, his enlightening explanations of the principles of Japanese garden design related to a Buddhist/Taoist philosophy of the meaning of life, linked in turn to woodcuts and the art of tattooing, and by his evocation of life in 1950s Malaya with the interaction of different cultural groups, including an introduction to a neglected aspect of colonial history in the rise of communist terrorism in Malaya in the 1950s. The main characters are well-developed, complex and flawed so that you want to know why they behave as they do, what secrets they may be hiding, how a known fate came to befall them. Read more ›

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Most Recent Customer Reviews

3.0 out of 5 stars Gift

This also was a gift for my daughter in law who is enjoying this also. I have no more words to please this system.

Published 18 hours ago by Carol Dey

5.0 out of 5 stars Insight into Malaysia

I could not wait to read the authors second book and I was not disappointed. His descriptions are beautifully worded. Read more

Published 2 days ago by Ann Marsland

3.0 out of 5 stars Well written and engaging but

Well written and engaging but not, in my view, as good as A gift of Rain. Part of me feels this should be a 4 star rating but 4 stars, for me, are for books I really loved (5 stars... Read more

Published 2 days ago by Colleen

5.0 out of 5 stars great read

Very interesting history of malaya, japan in second world war and afterwards and super story. Well worth reading. Characters well developed.

Published 4 days ago by melanie

5.0 out of 5 stars The Garden of Evening Mists

A very well written book dealing with topcs I presume many of us have only sketchy knowledge about. It creates various atmospheres and locations successfully and succeeded in... Read more

Published 4 days ago by Helen Jones

5.0 out of 5 stars wonderful story, great writing

Beautiful hypnotic book, deeply bittersweet. A real sensory experience. And within this, a hard story to tell about brutally of war and conflict

Published 5 days ago by lizhoo68

5.0 out of 5 stars A Beautiful Book

The language of this book is sheer poetry, with an interesting background of the history of Malaya during the last World War. Read more

Published 8 days ago by Sandra Monks

5.0 out of 5 stars The Garden of Evening Mists

A wonderfully descriptive, atmospheric and sensitive story set in war ravaged Malaya. Covering cross cultural relationships in times of conflict. A very worthwhile read.

Published 11 days ago by Ruth Burnet

5.0 out of 5 stars I loved The Garden of Evening mists

Brilliant book, absolutely gripping from beginning to end. I found it strange to find myself in the 21 century each time I put it down.

Published 11 days ago by Pat Russell

4.0 out of 5 stars Different but compelling

A very different settting for a story - post WWII in Asia - the Cameron Highlands of Malaysia to be precise - during the troubles. Read more

Published 14 days ago by Sally Wood

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