It was announced yesterday in Hong Kong that Malaysia’s Tan Twan Eng is the winner of the 2012 Man Asian Literary Prize, currently the most prestigious prize awarded to fiction from Asia.
Tan Twan Eng won for his novel The Garden of Evening Mists,which was also shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize and appeared on AGI’s list of the Top 10 Books on Asia from 2012.Mr. Tan is the first author from Malaysia ever to receive this award, also taking home the $30,000 that comes along with it.
The Garden of Evening Mists is set mainly in the highlands during the Malayan Emergency of the 1950s, a guerrilla war fought between colonial armed forces primarily from Britain and communists from the Malayan National Liberation Army. It also looks back to the Japanese invasion during World War II. The two central protaganists are a woman trying to come to terms with the past, and a Japanese gardener who is more than meets the eye.
The chair judge of the literary prize said of the novel “The layering of historical periods is intricate, the descriptions of highland Malaysia are richly evocative, and the characterisation is both dark and compelling. Guarding its mysteries until the very end, this is a novel of subtle power and redemptive grace.”
Born in Penang, Malaysia, educated at the University of London, and now living in South Africa, Tan Twan Eng had previously been praised for his novel-The Gift of Rain,also set in Malaysia’s past and revolving around an important Japanese character.If you liked The Garden of Evening Mists,you would be well advised to seek this one out as well.
The four other novels on this year’s Man Asian prize list were Between Clay and Dust by Musharraf Ali Farooqi of Pakistan ,The Briefcase by Hiromi Kawakami of Japan,Narcopolis by Jeet Thayil of India,and Silent House by Orhan Pamuk of Turkey.
By Tim Holm
