{"id":41468,"date":"2023-09-18T06:30:23","date_gmt":"2023-09-17T18:30:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/?p=41468"},"modified":"2023-09-17T23:55:50","modified_gmt":"2023-09-17T11:55:50","slug":"just-arrived-the-garden-of-evening-mists-by-tan-twan-eng","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/2023\/09\/18\/just-arrived-the-garden-of-evening-mists-by-tan-twan-eng\/","title":{"rendered":"Just Arrived: “The Garden Of Evening Mists” by Tan Twan Eng"},"content":{"rendered":"

Recently, Marion Drolsbach — translator extraordinaire for The Heir of Night<\/em> — recommended The House of Doors<\/em><\/strong> by Tan Twan Eng, which she has (also recently) translated into Dutch.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to secure a copy of The House of Doors<\/em> yet. But fortunately, a local library was able to supply a copy of The Garden of Evening Mists<\/strong><\/em>, also by Tan Twan Eng, which won the Man Asia Literary Prize and Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction in 2013, as well as being shortlisted for the 2012 Man Booker Prize. So I have very good hope that this will prove an equally good starting point for reading the author’s work. \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n

Tan Twan Eng is a Malaysian author whose work has been critically acclaimed and widely translated. The Garden of Evening Mists<\/em> was his second novel and is set in Malaysia during the World War Two period and the Malayan Emergency of the ca. 1950s.<\/p>\n

The book has also been made into a film.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

The Independent<\/em> called it an \u201celegant and haunting novel of war, art and memory.”<\/em> In terms of what more I can say without having read it myself yet ( \ud83d\ude00 ), the following is derived from the back cover synopsis:<\/p>\n

“On a mountain above the clouds in the central highlands of Malaya, lived the man who had been the gardener of the Emperor of Japan.<\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

Malaya, 1951. Teoh Yun Ling, the scarred lone survivor of a brutal Japanese wartime camp, seeks solace among the jungle-fringed tea plantations of the 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.<\/em><\/span><\/div>\n

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?”<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"

Audio book<\/p><\/div>\n

It sounds like a very interesting story, so together with Marion’s recommendation for the author’s most recent novel, I am looking forward to reading it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Recently, Marion Drolsbach — translator extraordinaire for The Heir of Night — recommended The House of Doors by Tan Twan Eng, which she has (also recently) translated into Dutch. Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to secure a copy of The House of Doors yet. But fortunately, a local library was able to supply a copy […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-41468","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-justarrived"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41468","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41468"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41468\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":41474,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41468\/revisions\/41474"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41468"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41468"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41468"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}