The Garden of Evening Mists
SynopsisPlot
Malaya, 1951. Yun Ling Teoh, the scarred lone survivor of a brutal Japanese wartime camp, seeks solace among the jungle-fringed tea plantations of Cameron Highlands. There she discovers Yugiri, the only Japanese garden in Malaya, and its owner and creator, the enigmatic Aritomo, exiled former gardener of the emperor of Japan. Despite her hatred of the Japanese, Yun Ling seeks to engage Aritomo to create a garden in memory of her sister, who died in the camp. Aritomo refuses but agrees to accept Yun Ling as his apprentice "until the monsoon comes." Then she can design a garden for herself. As the months pass, Yun Ling finds herself intimately drawn to the gardener and his art, while all around them a communist guerilla war rages. But the Garden of Evening Mists remains a place of mystery. Who is Aritomo and how did he come to leave Japan? And is the real story of how Yun Ling managed to survive the war perhaps the darkest secret of all?
Story
About this book
In 1951, Teoh Yun Ling travels into the Cameron Highlands of Malaya. She is the sole survivor of a Japanese wartime camp where her sister died, and she has spent the years since helping prosecute Japanese war criminals. She asks Nakamura Aritomo, an exiled former gardener of the Emperor of Japan, to build a memorial garden for her sister. He refuses, but agrees to take her as an apprentice until the monsoon.
Yun Ling stays at Majuba Tea Estate, owned by Magnus Pretorius, a veteran of the Boer War. Aritomo's garden, Yugiri, is the only Japanese garden in Malaya, set among jungle-fringed tea plantations. As the months pass and she is drawn to his art, the Malayan Emergency intensifies. Communist guerrillas attack planters, miners and their families, while nationalists press for independence from British colonial rule.
Tan Twan Eng sets questions of memory, survival and uneasy trust inside this landscape. Aritomo's reasons for leaving Japan stay unclear, and Yun Ling's account of her own survival holds material she has not disclosed. The novel moves between the patient discipline of garden design and the disorder of a country caught between occupation, insurgency and the end of colonial rule.
