The Garden Of Evening Mists by Tan Twan Eng

This is the fourth book longlisted for the Man Booker Prize this year that I have read, and the second by the author. He is a Malaysian and both his books have been set there, and set within the context of WWII. One thing that comes through loud and clear is that the legacy of colonialization is complex, and it leaves many enemies in it's wake. The 'liberators' of today become the 'oppressors' of tomorrow. It is an oft sung song, but the tone and content are different in this particular setting. The war has just ended, but that means tha no one is officially fighting. It does not mean that the atrocities are over, and it most certainly doesn't mean that the memories of the war have faded in any way. The voice of the novel is Teoh Yun Ling, a Girton-educated retired judge in independent Malaysia, born in 1923 and brought up among the loyal colonial elite (“the King’s Chinese”) of Penang. After the Japanese invasion, she is taken to a brothel with other underaged girls, raped repeatedly as a “Guest of the Emperor”, and then sent to spend the rest of the war in a remote jungle prison camp. She escaped, but her beloved sister Yun Hong did not. At the end of the war the Japanese killed all remaining prisoners, and while Yun Ling fulfilled her promise to her sister to escape, she did not escape her survivor guilt for having done so. Yun Hong's path to healing comes from an unexpected source. She meets another who is seeking redemption. Aritomo is an enigmatic former gardener to the Emperor of Japan working to restore a destroyed Japanese garden for an unbidden master. Yun Hong wants him to build a garden for her sister, but he will not do it. Instead, he takes her on as an apprentice and tells her “Every aspect of gardening is a form of deception”. Well, he is deceiving her--he is ostensibly teaching her the art of outdoor deception while he is helping her to heal. Initially he is the enemy, based solely on his country of origin, but in the end she sees that he has saved her. He leaves her with a work of his art that she seeks to preserve. The writing is ethereal. It transports the reader to a place that feels very different and foreign, but also pleasant and soothing, despite the very traumatic material it describes. Magnificent.