Tan Twan Eng was born in Penang, but lived in various places in Malaysia
as a child. He studied law through the University of London, and later worked
as an advocate and solicitor in one of Kuala Lumpur's most reputable law firms.
He also has a first-dan ranking in akido and is a strong proponent for the
conservation of heritage buildings. He has spent the last year travelling
around South Africa, and currently lives in Cape Town where he is working
on his second book.
His first book, The Gift of Rain (2007)
The Gift of Rain
In 1939, 16-year-old Philip - the half-Chinese youngest child of Noel Hutton, head of one of Penang?s great trading families ? feels alienated from both the British and Chinese communities. He discovers a sense of belonging in his unexpected friendship with Hayato Endo, a Japanese diplomat who rents an island from his father. Philip proudly shows his new friend around his adored island of Penang, and Endo teaches him about Japanese language and culture, and trains him in the art and discipline of aikido. But such knowledge comes at a terrible price. The enigmatic Endo is bound by obligations of his own; and too late, as the Japanese invade Malaya, Philip realises that his sensei ? to whom he owes absolute loyalty ? is a Japanese spy. Forced into collaborating with the Japanese to safeguard his family and their interests, Philip turns into the ultimate outsider, trusted by none and hated by many. Tormented by his part in events, by deaths he is powerless to prevent, he risks everything to redress his moral balance by working in secret to save as many people as he can from the savagery of the invaders, and in so doing finds out who and what he really is. Driven by the prophetic words of an ancient soothsayer, ?The Gift of Rain? explores the opposing ideas of predestination and self-determination, as Philip traces a perilous and sometimes unclear path through the terrible years of the war. It takes the reader from the final days of the Chinese emperors to the dying era of the British Empire, and through the magical temples, exhilarating cities and forbidding rain forests of Malaya. ?The Gift of Rain? is epic, haunting and unforgettable, richly shot through with themes and ideas, a novel about agonisingly divided loyalties and unbearable loss. But it is also about human courage and ? ultimately ? about the nature of enduring love.
Second novel 2012
The Garden of Evening Mists
"On a mountain above the clouds, in the central highlands of Malaya lived the man who had been the gardener of the Emperor of Japan.”
Teoh Yun Ling was seventeen years old when she first heard about him, but a war would come, and a decade would pass before she travels up to the Garden of Evening Mists to see him, in 1951. A survivor of a brutal Japanese camp, she has spent the last few years helping to prosecute Japanese war criminals. Despite her hatred of the Japanese, she asks the gardener, Nakamura Aritomo, to create a memorial garden for her sister who died in the camp. He refuses, but agrees to accept Yun Ling as his apprentice ‘until the monsoon’ so she can design a garden herself.
Staying at the home of Magnus Pretorius, the owner of Majuba Tea Estate and a veteran of the Boer War, Yun Ling begins working in the Garden of Evening Mists. But outside in the surrounding jungles another war is raging. The Malayan Emergency is entering its darkest days, the communist-terrorists murdering planters and miners and their families, seeking to take over the country by any means, while the Malayan nationalists are fighting for independence from centuries of British colonial rule.
But who is Nakamura Aritomo, and how did he come to be exiled from his homeland? And is the true reason how Yun Ling survived the Japanese camp connected to Aritomo and the Garden of Evening Mists?
Source: http://www.tantwaneng.com/
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