I love this book!! It grabbed me from page one and kept me interested until the very end. Written by Malaysia author, Tan Twan Eng, it was nominated for the 2012 Man Book Prize.
This novel is set in the Cameron Highlands on the Malay peninsula. It begins in the present and jumps from World War II and the early 1950s back to the present. This exotic locale is the backdrop to a varied cast of characters. Yun Ling Teoh is a Malay of Chinese ancestry. During the war she and her older sister were captured by the Japanese and spent more than 3 years in a brutal Japanese wartime camp. She is the lone survivor of this camp. After the war she is determined to remember her sister by constructing a garden of memory. She seeks the help of Aritomo, a Japanese master gardener who has lived in Mayaysia since the late 1930s. In addition to these two principal characters, there is a Dutch tea plantation owner and his Asian wife, who are long-time friends of Teoh and Aritomo.
The relationship between Teoh and Aritomo, pupil and teacher, evolves into a deep, trusting, loving one. Against this backdrop, the reader learns about the ancient art of Japanese gardening, the horrific treatment of the Malaysians during WWII, and the activities of the Communists during the 1950s. All of these elements are woven into a terrific novel by Tan Twan Eng.