Tan Twan Eng (1972) is a Malaysian writer who has published two novels, both of which have met with considerable attention. Both the 2007 novel The Gift of Rain as well as The Garden of Evening Mists from 2012 look at the fate of Malaysia and its people in the Second World War. The Gift of Rain is about the complicated friendship of the Chinese-English Philip and his aikido teacher, the Japanese diplomat Hayato Endo. The protagonists of The Garden of Evening Mists are the narrator Teoh Yun Ling, a Malay woman who survived the Japanese occupation during the Second World War, including a violence-filled concentration camp, and the Japanese gardener called Nakamura Aritomo. The novel is a look at the complicated recent history of Malaysia, full of war crimes and injustice, but also a psychological musing on the power of friendship that enables people to overcome cultural differences and their concomitant unfairness. The unearthly garden of Nakamura lends a poetic streak to the novel, standing on the border between culture and nature and seemingly reconciling people to their fate and showing them the way to forgiveness. Tan Twan Eng will talk to writer Jan Kaus.