The Garden of Evening Mists

by Tan Twan Eng

This book takes place in Malaya.  It is about a woman who was a prisoner in a Japanese labour camp and who is trying to come to terms with what happened to her and the death of her sister in the camp.

When the story starts the woman is retiring from her position as a judge because of her health -- she has been diagnosed with a degenerative brain disorder.  She has returned to a garden she helped build many years before.

The woman is the sole survivor of the camp she was imprisoned in.  One of the Japanese officials took her out of the camp just prior to the mine and all the prisoners being destroyed.  She was saved because she worked as a translator and also because she ratted on the other prisoners.  She tried to help her sister by giving her food scraps-- her sister was one of the women servicing the military personnel.  Her sister had tried to kill herself but was told if she did that they would put her sister (the main character) into the brothel in her place, so the sister stays and suffers the indignities.

The main character obviously hates the Japanese after what they did to her, beat her, chopped off two of her fingers and raped and murdered her sister.  However, she decides to build a Japanese garden to honour her sisters memory.  She goes to a man, who was formerly a gardener to the Japanese Emperor who has been exiled, or exiled himself to Malaya.  He refuses to build the garden but agrees to teach her how to build a garden and she becomes his apprentice, and eventually his lover.  One night the Japanese man goes for a walk into the forest, which he knows very well, but does not return.  He is never found our heard from again.
While the woman is learning to be a gardener there are communist "terrorists" attacking people in the area.  The woman helps some of them to surrender and is also attacked and almost killed by others.

As the story proceeds we find the main character trying to write about her life, before she forgets how to write and speak.  She has some art that he created, including a tatoo mural he created on her back.  Although she had been reluctant to do so previously, she decides to share share the pictures with a Japanese historian.

This was a fascinating, very powerful story about pain, forgiveness, letting go, memory.  I will certainly want to read it again in the future.  The language was beautiful, the story so engaging I couldn't put it down.