Tan’s the Man after winning top award
Tan Twan Eng, who has a home in Cape Town, has won the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction for The Garden of Evening Mists. Picture: Reuters Tan Twan Eng, who has a home in Cape Town, has won the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction for The Garden of Evening Mists. Picture: Reuters
South African-based Tan Twan Eng has won the prestigious Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction from a shortlist of some of the world’s finest literary stars, including double Man Booker winner Hilary Mantel.
Tan’s book, The Garden of Evening Mists, set in Japanese-occupied Malaysia during and after World War II, was shortlisted for last year’s Man Booker award against Mantel, who won the prize for Bring Up The Bodies. Tan’s book went on to win the 2012 Man Asian Literary prize.
“I was very pleased to meet Hilary Mantel again at the Walter Scott award ceremony – she is extremely friendly and gracious and so talented. Sitting next to her and Pat Barker and Anthony Quinn at the announcement, I had no expectation of winning,” Tan said this week.
The £25 000 prize (about R396 000) was presented to him at the Border Book Festival by the Duke of Buccleuch, who launched the prize in 2010, and whom Tan describes as “one of the warmest, most generous people I’ve met”. The duke is a descendant of Walter Scott, whose novel, Waverley, is considered to be the first historical novel of the modern era.
Also shortlisted for this year’s Scott prize was Thomas Keneally.
Tan’s win places him firmly on the “A list” of literary stars. His first novel, The Gift of Rain, was longlisted for the Booker Prize in 2007.
“In my books I’ve written about history, about the past. Yet, like many writers, I’m sure, I never saw myself as writing historical fiction. To me, the past is so real, so close. It is all around us still, and it will always be around us. This award plays a hugely important role in telling the world that history, and historical fiction will always matter.”
Tan first came to South Africa to study at UCT for a Master’s degree in maritime law. Since then he has lived here for much of the time.
The other shortlisted books for the Scott prize were: Mantel’s Bring Up the Bodies, Barker’s Toby’s Room, Thomas Keneally’s The Daughters of Mars, Quinn’s The Streets, and Rose Tremain’s Merivel: A Man of His Time.
The judges said of Tan’s novel: “ The Garden of Evening Mists is the book that left the deepest imprint on us. The poignancy of both remembering and forgetting is what this book is all about.”