![]() ![]() The beautiful garden referred to in the title plays host to the intertwining of several lives at a period cursed with being, so the saying goes, an “interesting time.” As the story begins, decades later, Judge Yun Ling Teoh, the second woman to be appointed to the Supreme Court that sits in Kuala Lumpur, is retiring from the bench. The crucial action in “The Garden of Evening Mists,” a strong, quiet novel by Tan Twan Eng, a Malaysian writer who now lives part of the year in Cape Town, takes place in Malaya just after World War II. And yet, for all its mystery, the Japanese garden reveals itself as a capacious symbol of the human soul, replete with exactly the kinds of “borrowed landscapes” we live with. It may take ages for a Japanese garden to come to maturity, to say nothing of the gardener. It’s about secrets, perspectives, initiation, memory and time. ![]() Still, the traditional Japanese garden, esoteric as it is, has an ancient and undeniable appeal. IF you’ve never seen one, it’s almost impossible to capture the mesmerizing allure of a classic Japanese garden - and even standing for the first time in front of a bed of raked gravel can be a challenge. ![]()
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