Tan Twan Eng

Tan Twan Eng was born in Penang, Malaysia. He worked as an Intellectual Property lawyer before resigning from his position to write his novel, The Gift of Rain. He divides his time between Kuala Lumpur and Cape Town.

The Gift of Rain was Longlisted for the Man Booker Prize. It has been translated into Italian, Spanish, Greek, Romanian, Czech and Serbian.

His latest novel is The Garden of Evening Mists, shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2012. Boyd Tonkin in The Independent called it

'an elegant and haunting novel of art and war and memory...Tan writes with breath-catching poise and grace, linguistic refinement and searching intelligence...His fictional garden cultivates formal harmony -but also undermines it. It unmasks sophisticated artistry as a partner of pain and lies. This duality invests the novel with a climate of doubt; a mood - as with Aritomo's creation - of "tension and possibility". Its beauty never comes to rest.'

The Garden of Evening Mists has also been longlisted for the Man Asian Literary Prize 2012. The shortlist will be announced in January 2013.

It has also been translated/will be translated into German, French, Italian, Serbian, Spanish, Dutch, Polish, and Taiwanese Chinese.