The Garden of Evening Mists by Tan Twan Eng is published by Myrmidon.
Photograph © Newcastle Centre for the Literary Arts
Tan Twan Eng speaks to Granta’s John Freeman about the art of shakkei and being shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize.
The Garden of Evening Mists by Tan Twan Eng is published by Myrmidon.
Photograph © Newcastle Centre for the Literary Arts
‘The anglophone world, we have to infer, has run out of words for its own feelings.’
Daisy Hildyard on the wisdom of scarecrows.
‘What is the read receipt for?’
Lillian Fishman on texting, power and the ethics of leaving a friend on read.
‘Like pretty much everyone who uses the internet, I have seen many terrible things that I did not search for and that I cannot unsee.’
Rosanna McLaughlin on what the internet thinks she wants.
‘I have a pathological addiction to the internet, which I indulge with the excuse of making art. It rarely translates to anything good and mostly leaves me overstimulated and afraid.’
Paul Dalla Rosa on excess and the internet.
‘rumors of bees on speedwell, / no oxidative stress just / effortless pollination’
Two poems by Sylvia Legris.
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 long-listed for the Man Booker Prize and has been translated into Italian, Spanish, Greek, Romanian, Czech and Serbian. The Garden of Evening Mists is his second novel and is currently short-listed for the Man Booker Prize.
More about the author →John Freeman is the founder of the literary annual Freeman's and an executive editor at Alfred A. Knopf. He is also the author and editor of eleven books, including Dictionary of the Undoing; There's a Revolution Outside, My Love (co-edited with Tracy K Smith), and Wind, Trees, a new collection of poems. His work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, and been translated into more than twenty languages. Once a month he hosts The California Book Club, an online discussion of a classic book of golden state literature for Alta magazine. He lives in New York City.
More about the author →A selection of Granta contributors discuss the books they read in 2012.
‘Suspecting (rightly) that you have been eating diluted, unauthentic versions of the real thing, you realize you have to go to Penang, the best place to eat street food in Malaysia.’
‘The viewer has to pour their own unconscious into interpreting these images, make them their own, allow themselves to be encouraged by the existence of a void.’
‘The only thing on the schedule was spa.’
Lauren Oyler on her trip to Marienbad.
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