Historical fiction book · Curated
The Garden of Evening Mists
Tan Twan Eng · historical fiction
A judge in Malaya tends a Japanese garden and confronts wartime memory (Walter Scott Prize 2013).
About this historical novel
The Garden of Evening Mists by Tan Twan Eng is historical fiction set around 1940s–1950s in the World War II era / Cold War period with key settings including Malaya, Cameron Highlands. A judge in Malaya tends a Japanese garden and confronts wartime memory (Walter Scott Prize 2013).
On HisFic we tag it under 1. Literary historical fiction so you can pair it with similar story types. Recurring themes include memory, war, art, and identity. It also appears on our prize-winner shelf—useful if you like critically recognized historical novels.
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Plot summary
A judge in Malaya tends a Japanese garden and confronts wartime memory (Walter Scott Prize 2013).
Awards
- ★ Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction · 2013 (winner)
UK’s leading HF prize (founded 2010). Often called the most prestigious award dedicated to historical fiction.
Subgenres
Eras
Browse this mix
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A girl sold into Kyoto’s geisha world navigates art, rivalry, and war.
- A Gentleman in Moscow · Amor Towles
Count Alexander Rostov is sentenced to house arrest in Moscow’s Metropol Hotel as the Soviet century remakes the world outside. Over three decades he builds a life of friendship, purpose, and quiet resistance within the hotel’s walls.
- A Town Like Alice · Nevil Shute
Jean Paget, a young Englishwoman working in Malaya when the Japanese invade, is marched for months with a party of women and children, and an Australian prisoner, Joe Harman, is punished for helping them. Nevil Shute’s 1950 novel is World War II romance historical fiction of the years after—an inheritance in 1948, the news that Joe survived, and the outback settlement she sets out to turn into a town like Alice Springs.
- The English Patient · Michael Ondaatje
In the last months of World War II, a burned, nameless man lies in a ruined Italian villa with a Canadian nurse, a maimed thief, and a Sikh sapper—while morphine brings back the North African desert and a love affair that crossed maps and sides. Michael Ondaatje’s Booker-winning novel is WWII historical fiction of occupation, exploration, and the wreckage four people carry out of the war.
Regions & places
Asia
Malaya · Cameron Highlands
Themes
- memory
- war
- art
- identity
Tags
award-winner