--- product_id: 3584950 title: "The Garden of Evening Mists" price: "€ 29.98" currency: EUR in_stock: true reviews_count: 7 url: https://www.desertcart.gr/products/3584950-the-garden-of-evening-mists store_origin: GR region: Greece --- # The Garden of Evening Mists **Price:** € 29.98 **Availability:** ✅ In Stock ## Quick Answers - **What is this?** The Garden of Evening Mists - **How much does it cost?** € 29.98 with free shipping - **Is it available?** Yes, in stock and ready to ship - **Where can I buy it?** [www.desertcart.gr](https://www.desertcart.gr/products/3584950-the-garden-of-evening-mists) ## Best For - Customers looking for quality international products ## Why This Product - Free international shipping included - Worldwide delivery with tracking - 15-day hassle-free returns ## Description The Garden of Evening Mists [Eng, Tan Twan] on desertcart.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. The Garden of Evening Mists Review: The role of memory in human existence, and the relationship between memory and forgetting - Malaysian author Tan Twan Eng, born in Penang, Malaysia, divides his time between Kuala Lumpur and Cape Town. THE GARDEN OF EVENING MISTS is his second novel: his debut was the highly respected and awarded THE GIFT OF RAIN. Eng’s sensitivity to his readers is evident in an author’s note at book’s end: ’With the exception of the obvious historical figures, all characters in the novel sprang from my imagination. The visit of Sir Gerald Templer and his wife to Majuba Tea Estate and Yugiri is fictional. The Malayan Emergency ended in July 1960, twelve years after it began. With the combined efforts of local security forces, civilians and troops from the Commonwealth, Malaya was one of the few countries in the world to defeat a communist insurgency. Noel Barber in his book The War of the Running Dogs called it “the world’s first struggle against guerrilla Communism. I am grateful to Tristan Beauchamp Russell for describing to me what life on his tea estate in Cameron Highlands was like during the Malayan Emergency.’ In keeping with the eloquent tonality of his first novel, Eng opens this book with a stunningly seductive aperitif: ‘On a mountain above the clouds once lived a man who had been the gardener of the emperor of Japan. Not many people would have known of him before the war, but I did. He had left his home on the rim of the sunrise to come to the central highlands of Malaya. I was seventeen years old when my sister first told me about him. A decade would pass before I traveled up to the mountains to see him. He did not apologize for what his countrymen had done to my sister and me. Not on that rain-scratched morning when we first met, nor at any other time. What words could have healed my pain, returned my sister to me? None. And he understood that. Not many people did.' Eng’s novel unveils an aspect of world history and wars about which few of us are familiar – the Japanese occupation of Malaya, post war the Malayan Emergency, and the rise of the independent Malaya. The novel is breathtaking not only in the themes but also in the eloquence of Eng’s writing. A detailed synopsis is helpful to the first time Eng reader - “Newly retired Supreme Court Judge Teoh Yun Ling returns to the Cameron Highlands of Malaya, where she had spent a few months several years earlier. Oncoming aphasia is forcing her to deal with unsettled business from her youth while she is still able to remember. She starts writing her memoir and agrees to meet with Japanese professor Yoshikawa Tatsuji. Tatsuji is interested in the life and works of artist Nakamura Aritomo, who used to be the Japanese Emperor's gardener but moved to this area to build his own garden. During the Japanese occupation of Malaya, Yun Ling was in a Japanese civilian internment camp with her sister, Yun Hong. Yun Hong did not make it out alive, and after the war was over, Yun Ling decided to fulfil a promise made to her sister: to build a Japanese garden in their home in Kuala Lumpur. She travelled to the highlands to visit family friend Magnus Pretorius, an ex-patriate South African tea farmer who knew Aritomo. Aritomo refused to work for Yun Ling but agreed to take her on as an apprentice, so she could later build her own garden. Despite her resentment against the Japanese, Yun Ling agreed to work for Aritomo and later became his lover. During the conversations with Tatsuji, it comes out that Aritomo was involved in a covert Japanese program during the war, to hide looted treasures from occupied territories. The rumors of this so-called "Golden Lily" program were widespread, and Magnus was killed trying to save his family from the Communist guerillas who came looking for the gold. Aritomo never talked about the treasure to Yun Ling, but gradually it becomes clear that he might have left a clue to its location. Before he disappeared into the jungle, he made a horimono tattoo on her back. It now appears this tattoo might contain a map to the location of the treasure. Yun Ling decides that, before she dies, she must ensure that no one will be able to get their hands on her body or the map. In the meantime, she sets out to restore Aritomo's dilapidated garden.’ The book is cinematic and yet often so mist shrouded that film may not be able to convey all levels of meaning. This is one of the great novels of the past decade and deserves wide readership. Grady Harp, October 17 Review: A memory book - This is a tale of war and loss. The central character is a Chinese Malaysian daughter of a wealthy rubber trader. She and her sister are taken as teenagers in the 1940s to a Japanese labor camp, where she is initially forced into a brutal mining operation and her sister becomes a “comfort woman” for Japanese guards. Eventually, her knowledge of English allows her to become a translator for one of the Japanese officials of the camp and she is allowed to escape the destruction of the camp and murder of all its remaining prisoners at the end of the war, the sole survivor. The second part of her story is her plan to build a Japanese garden in honor of her sister. To that end, she moves to a tea plantation to become an apprentice and eventual lover of a man who is a prominent artist and was once a gardener to the Japanese emperor. This is the period of the communist insurgency in Malaya, another time of great strife and brutality. After the disappearance of her Japanese lover she goes to England to get a law degree and follow a career as an important judge in independent Malaysia. As she reaches her 60s, she is diagnosed with a neurological condition that will rob her of memory and functions. So she returns to the tea plantation to write about her experiences and honor her Japanese mentor by rebuilding his garden and studying his other artistic efforts. The above is a linear narrative of her story, but the novel does not unfold as a linear narrative. Instead, it progresses as a memory narrative, in fits and starts, jumping from one period to another. This approach provides a source of power to the story, but makes it a more difficult read, as the transitions are often abrupt and unanticipated. It is not a story for a casual read. This is the second novel by this author that I have read, both about the Japanese occupation of Malaya and its consequences. This book is more lyrical and mysterious and well worth reading for both its historical value and its unfolding of the various Asian mentalities, always a source of mystery to Americans. There have been a lot of novels recently concerned with WWII occupations, describing their brutality and psychology. A central issue has been how the Germans and Japanese, people associated with cultures of beauty and order, could have been involved in such cruelty. Aside from the “master race” argument, there have been few concrete answers, but the question is well worth continuing consideration to avoid its repetition. ## Technical Specifications | Specification | Value | |---------------|-------| | Best Sellers Rank | #64,741 in Books ( See Top 100 in Books ) #462 in War Fiction (Books) #1,861 in Literary Fiction (Books) | | Customer Reviews | 4.4 4.4 out of 5 stars (8,750) | | Dimensions | 6 x 1 x 8.95 inches | | Edition | Original | | ISBN-10 | 1602861803 | | ISBN-13 | 978-1602861800 | | Item Weight | 13.6 ounces | | Language | English | | Print length | 352 pages | | Publication date | September 4, 2012 | | Publisher | Grand Central Publishing | ## Images ![The Garden of Evening Mists - Image 1](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/8198G9WkifL.jpg) ## Customer Reviews ### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ The role of memory in human existence, and the relationship between memory and forgetting *by G***P on October 10, 2017* Malaysian author Tan Twan Eng, born in Penang, Malaysia, divides his time between Kuala Lumpur and Cape Town. THE GARDEN OF EVENING MISTS is his second novel: his debut was the highly respected and awarded THE GIFT OF RAIN. Eng’s sensitivity to his readers is evident in an author’s note at book’s end: ’With the exception of the obvious historical figures, all characters in the novel sprang from my imagination. The visit of Sir Gerald Templer and his wife to Majuba Tea Estate and Yugiri is fictional. The Malayan Emergency ended in July 1960, twelve years after it began. With the combined efforts of local security forces, civilians and troops from the Commonwealth, Malaya was one of the few countries in the world to defeat a communist insurgency. Noel Barber in his book The War of the Running Dogs called it “the world’s first struggle against guerrilla Communism. I am grateful to Tristan Beauchamp Russell for describing to me what life on his tea estate in Cameron Highlands was like during the Malayan Emergency.’ In keeping with the eloquent tonality of his first novel, Eng opens this book with a stunningly seductive aperitif: ‘On a mountain above the clouds once lived a man who had been the gardener of the emperor of Japan. Not many people would have known of him before the war, but I did. He had left his home on the rim of the sunrise to come to the central highlands of Malaya. I was seventeen years old when my sister first told me about him. A decade would pass before I traveled up to the mountains to see him. He did not apologize for what his countrymen had done to my sister and me. Not on that rain-scratched morning when we first met, nor at any other time. What words could have healed my pain, returned my sister to me? None. And he understood that. Not many people did.' Eng’s novel unveils an aspect of world history and wars about which few of us are familiar – the Japanese occupation of Malaya, post war the Malayan Emergency, and the rise of the independent Malaya. The novel is breathtaking not only in the themes but also in the eloquence of Eng’s writing. A detailed synopsis is helpful to the first time Eng reader - “Newly retired Supreme Court Judge Teoh Yun Ling returns to the Cameron Highlands of Malaya, where she had spent a few months several years earlier. Oncoming aphasia is forcing her to deal with unsettled business from her youth while she is still able to remember. She starts writing her memoir and agrees to meet with Japanese professor Yoshikawa Tatsuji. Tatsuji is interested in the life and works of artist Nakamura Aritomo, who used to be the Japanese Emperor's gardener but moved to this area to build his own garden. During the Japanese occupation of Malaya, Yun Ling was in a Japanese civilian internment camp with her sister, Yun Hong. Yun Hong did not make it out alive, and after the war was over, Yun Ling decided to fulfil a promise made to her sister: to build a Japanese garden in their home in Kuala Lumpur. She travelled to the highlands to visit family friend Magnus Pretorius, an ex-patriate South African tea farmer who knew Aritomo. Aritomo refused to work for Yun Ling but agreed to take her on as an apprentice, so she could later build her own garden. Despite her resentment against the Japanese, Yun Ling agreed to work for Aritomo and later became his lover. During the conversations with Tatsuji, it comes out that Aritomo was involved in a covert Japanese program during the war, to hide looted treasures from occupied territories. The rumors of this so-called "Golden Lily" program were widespread, and Magnus was killed trying to save his family from the Communist guerillas who came looking for the gold. Aritomo never talked about the treasure to Yun Ling, but gradually it becomes clear that he might have left a clue to its location. Before he disappeared into the jungle, he made a horimono tattoo on her back. It now appears this tattoo might contain a map to the location of the treasure. Yun Ling decides that, before she dies, she must ensure that no one will be able to get their hands on her body or the map. In the meantime, she sets out to restore Aritomo's dilapidated garden.’ The book is cinematic and yet often so mist shrouded that film may not be able to convey all levels of meaning. This is one of the great novels of the past decade and deserves wide readership. Grady Harp, October 17 ### ⭐⭐⭐⭐ A memory book *by K***R on May 23, 2015* This is a tale of war and loss. The central character is a Chinese Malaysian daughter of a wealthy rubber trader. She and her sister are taken as teenagers in the 1940s to a Japanese labor camp, where she is initially forced into a brutal mining operation and her sister becomes a “comfort woman” for Japanese guards. Eventually, her knowledge of English allows her to become a translator for one of the Japanese officials of the camp and she is allowed to escape the destruction of the camp and murder of all its remaining prisoners at the end of the war, the sole survivor. The second part of her story is her plan to build a Japanese garden in honor of her sister. To that end, she moves to a tea plantation to become an apprentice and eventual lover of a man who is a prominent artist and was once a gardener to the Japanese emperor. This is the period of the communist insurgency in Malaya, another time of great strife and brutality. After the disappearance of her Japanese lover she goes to England to get a law degree and follow a career as an important judge in independent Malaysia. As she reaches her 60s, she is diagnosed with a neurological condition that will rob her of memory and functions. So she returns to the tea plantation to write about her experiences and honor her Japanese mentor by rebuilding his garden and studying his other artistic efforts. The above is a linear narrative of her story, but the novel does not unfold as a linear narrative. Instead, it progresses as a memory narrative, in fits and starts, jumping from one period to another. This approach provides a source of power to the story, but makes it a more difficult read, as the transitions are often abrupt and unanticipated. It is not a story for a casual read. This is the second novel by this author that I have read, both about the Japanese occupation of Malaya and its consequences. This book is more lyrical and mysterious and well worth reading for both its historical value and its unfolding of the various Asian mentalities, always a source of mystery to Americans. There have been a lot of novels recently concerned with WWII occupations, describing their brutality and psychology. A central issue has been how the Germans and Japanese, people associated with cultures of beauty and order, could have been involved in such cruelty. Aside from the “master race” argument, there have been few concrete answers, but the question is well worth continuing consideration to avoid its repetition. ### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Review *by K***A on October 14, 2024* The package arrived on time, book is new and clean. It's a very interesting read. Can recommend. ## Frequently Bought Together - The Garden of Evening Mists - The Gift of Rain: A Novel - The House of Doors --- ## Why Shop on Desertcart? - 🛒 **Trusted by 1.3+ Million Shoppers** — Serving international shoppers since 2016 - 🌍 **Shop Globally** — Access 737+ million products across 21 categories - 💰 **No Hidden Fees** — All customs, duties, and taxes included in the price - 🔄 **15-Day Free Returns** — Hassle-free returns (30 days for PRO members) - 🔒 **Secure Payments** — Trusted payment options with buyer protection - ⭐ **TrustPilot Rated 4.5/5** — Based on 8,000+ happy customer reviews **Shop now:** [https://www.desertcart.gr/products/3584950-the-garden-of-evening-mists](https://www.desertcart.gr/products/3584950-the-garden-of-evening-mists) --- *Product available on Desertcart Greece* *Store origin: GR* *Last updated: 2026-06-05*