Ultimately, Yun Ling realises she has effectively built the memorial garden for her sister when she was apprenticed to Aritomo, and rather than risk further bloodshed for the sake of finding the site of her sister's death, she chooses to keep the garden to both honour her sister and remind people of the atrocities that lead to her death. Yun Ling wants to keep the horimono in memory of Aritomo, but after realising that other could learn this secret map (as Tatsuji did), she needs to choose between the horimono and the garden as, if Yun Ling kept the horimono and the garden, then people could use the map to find the treasure, which would create further conflict and suffering. These lines act as a map that guide you to both the camp she was held in and where the prisoners were buried with the treasures stolen by the Japanese. But the Garden of Evening Mists remains a place of mystery.(view spoiler) [The arrangement of the stones and sculpture in the garden create a shape that corresponds with the lines hidden in Yun Ling's horimono. Aritomo refuses but agrees to accept Yun Ling as his apprentice “until the monsoon comes.” Then she can design a garden for herself.Īs the months pass, Yung Ling finds herself intimately drawn to the gardener and his art, while all around them a communist guerrilla war rages. She fruitlessly hoped to find an officer who could help her locate the prison camp in order to properly bury the prisoners.

Ling spent the next years working in the judicial system while Japanese officers were tried for their war crimes. Despite her hatred of the Japanese, Yun Ling seeks to engage Aritomo to create a garden in memory of her sister, who died in the camp. An aboriginal boy found Ling and helped her to safety, making her the only prisoner to survive the camp. There she discovers Yugiri, the only Japanese garden in Malaya, and its owner and creator, the enigmatic Aritomo, exiled former gardener of the emperor of Japan. Yun Lings quest leads her to The Garden of Evening Mists, and to Aritomo, a man of extraordinary skill and reputation, once the gardener of the Emperor of Japan. Yun Ling Teoh, the scarred lone survivor of a brutal Japanese wartime camp, seeks solace among the jungle-fringed tea plantations of Cameron Highlands. In the highlands of Malaya, a woman sets out to build a memorial to her sister, killed at the hands of the Japanese during the brutal Occupation of their country.

“Set in Malaya once occupied by the Japanese in World War II, this novels journeys through memory and its relation to truth, and questions what we should remember and what to forget about our past.” ~RookReading List: Recent Prize Winner (Man Booker Prize Shortlist 2012)

The garden of evening mists book review