Malaysian novelist impresses judges with tale about memory and forgetting set in the shadow of the second world war
The Malaysian novelist Tan Twan Eng
has won the 2012 Man
Asian prize with his novel, The Garden of Evening Mists.
His
novel, which was shortlisted for last year's Booker prize, was hailed by the
chair of judges Maya Jaggi for its "stylistic poise and probing
intelligence".
"Taking its aesthetic cues
from the artful deceptions of Japanese landscape gardening," she said, "it opens
up a startling perspective on converging histories, using the feints and twists
of fiction to explore its themes
of personal and national honour; love and atonement; memory and forgetting; and
the disturbing co-existence of cultural refinement and barbarism."
The shadow of the second world war looms over the novel in which Eng recounts the story of a lawyer who seeks solace in a mountain-top garden after surviving a Japanese war camp and becoming involved in the prosecution of Japanese war criminals. Her friendship with a Japanese gardener is threatened by Malaya's recent history and its political breakdown.
"The layering of historical
periods is intricate, the descriptions of highland Malaysia are richly
evocative, and the characterisation is both dark and compelling," said Jaggi.
"Guarding its mysteries until the very end, this is a novel of subtle power and
redemptive grace."
Jaggi was joined on the panel for the $30,000 (£20,000) award by the novelists Monique Turond and Vikram Chandi.
Eng joins a roll call of
Man Asian prize winners that includes the Chinese writers Bi
Feiyu, Su Tong
and Jiang
Rong, who won the inaugural award in 2007.
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