The Garden of Evening Mists by Tan Twan Eng

Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize in 2012, The Garden of Evening Mists is set in Malaysia and takes place during three different time periods – the late 1980s, the early 1950s and World War II.  The narrator is Yun Ling Teoh, a newly retired Supreme Court Judge.  The story starts in the 1980s with her return to Yugiri, in the Cameron Highlands.  In Yugiri, Yun Ling decides to write her life story before she dies.  As she looks back we learn that she was the lone survivor of a brutal Japanese prisoner of war camp.  That, as a young woman in the 1950s, staying with friends in the Cameron Highlands, she visited Yugiri, the only Japanese garden in Malaya, to ask the owner, Aritomo, to design a garden in memory of her sister who died in the camp.  Aritomo is an exiled former gardener of the emperor of Japan. Aritomo refuses and instead offers her an apprenticeship.  Despite her hatred for the Japanese, she accepts.   As the months pass, Yun Ling grows to love the art of gardening and finds herself intimately drawn to Aritomo.  The mystery as to how Yun Ling survived the camp, when everyone else died, intensifies as the story unfolds.  I got a real sense of place from the evocative descriptions.  It was interesting to read about this period of Malayan history and how it shaped its political future.  I liked the contrast of the calmness of the garden and the violent political landscape. I found the ending a little unsatisfactory.