The Garden of Evening Mists

The Garden of Evening Mists is set against the backdrop of two violent conflicts that shaped modern Malaysia: the Japanese occupation (1941-1945) and the Malayan Emergency (1948-1960). The occupation was marked by extreme brutality, including the systematic torture and murder of civilians and the sexual enslavement of “comfort women” (jugan ianfu), an experience Yun Ling’s sister endures. The Malayan Emergency was a protracted guerrilla war fought between British Commonwealth forces and the Malayan National Liberation Army (MNLA), the armed wing of the Malayan Communist Party. Like the Japanese occupiers, the British resorted to brutal and illegal tactics to suppress the MNLA, including the world’s first use of herbicides as a weapon of war, as British forces sprayed Agent Orange from airplanes to deprive MNLA fighters of food and cover—a tactic that the United States would soon adopt in Vietnam. Though the MNLA never comprised more than about 8,000 fighters, British occupiers forcibly relocated approximately 1 million civilians—targeted for their ethnicity rather than for any actual involvement in the conflict—into “New Villages” that were effectively concentration camps in an attempt to deprive the MNLA of support. This policy is referenced in the novel.

The conflict’s unusual name began as a British euphemism: The British government wanted to avoid referring to the conflict as a war because insurance agencies in London would not pay claims arising from civil wars in the colonies.