The Garden of Evening Mists: A Review
In the penultimate of my reviews of novels longlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2012, I now turn to: Tan Twan Eng came to prominence with his 2007 debut novel, The Gift of Rain. That novel received a large amount of critical praise and saw him longlisted for the Man Booker Prize (won eventually by Anne Enright’s The Gathering). His latest novel, The Garden of Evening Mists, has seen him again longlisted for the Prize (alongside fellow contender in 2007, Nicola Barker). That his two novels have both been longlisted for Britain’s most prestigious literary prize speaks volumes about his talents. From the opening line - “On a mountain above the clouds once lived a man who had been the gardener of the Emperor of Japan.” – Twan Eng’s novel announces its author’s control of image, scene and story. Supreme Court judge Teoh Yun Ling has retired from her post in Kuala Lumpur for reasons unknown (to the reader and to the other characters), but i...