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Tan Twan Eng

Biography

Tan Twan Eng

Tan Twan Eng was born in Penang and lived in various places in Malaysia as a child. His first novel, THE GIFT OF RAIN, was longlisted for the Booker Prize and has been translated into Italian, Spanish, Greek, Romanian, Czech and Serbian. He is also the author of the novels THE GARDEN OF EVENING MISTS and THE HOUSE OF DOORS, the latter of which was longlisted for the Booker Prize.

Tan Twan Eng

Books by Tan Twan Eng

by Tan Twan Eng - Fiction, Historical Fiction

Lesley Hamlyn and her husband, Robert, are living at Cassowary House on the Straits Settlement of Penang. When “Willie” Somerset Maugham, a famed writer and old friend of Robert's, arrives for an extended visit with his secretary Gerald, the pair threatens a rift that could alter more lives than one. Having long hidden his homosexuality, Maugham’s unhappy and expensive marriage of convenience becomes unbearable after he loses his savings --- and the freedom to travel with Gerald. He arrives at Cassowary House in desperate need of a subject for his next book. Lesley, too, is enduring a marriage more duplicitous than it first appears. Maugham suspects an affair and, learning of Lesley's past connection to the Chinese revolutionary, Dr. Sun Yat Sen, decides to probe deeper.

by Tan Twan Eng - Fiction

Malaya, 1951. Yun Ling Teoh, the scarred lone survivor of a brutal Japanese wartime camp, seeks solace among the jungle-fringed tea plantations of Cameron Highlands. There she discovers Yugiri, the only Japanese garden in Malaya, and its owner and creator, the enigmatic Aritomo. Who is Aritomo, and how did he come to leave Japan? And is the real story of how Yun Ling managed to survive the war perhaps the darkest secret of all?