Author Tan Twan Eng became the first Malaysian author to win Asia’s top literary prize on Thursday for his novel set during the aftermath of the Japanese occupation of Malaya.
Tan won the $30,000 Man Asian Literary Prize with “The Garden of Evening Mists”, beating four other shortlisted books. Literary critic and journalist Maya Jaggi led the judging panel and said Tan’s novel “revisits the traumatic aftermath of the Japanese occupation of Malaya, and the post-war insurgency against British rule, with stylistic poise and probing intelligence”.