Tan Twan Eng
Tan Twan Eng
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Tan Twan Eng

Tan Twan Eng (Chinese: 陳團英; Pe̍h-ōe-jī: Tân Thoân-eng; b. 1972) is a Malaysian novelist who writes in English. He published his first novel, The Gift of Rain, in 2007. He is best known for his 2012 book The Garden of Evening Mists which won the Man Asian Literary Prize and Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction, and was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, making Tan the first Malaysian to be recognised by all three awards.

Tan was born in Penang and grew up in Kuala Lumpur.

He is of the Straits Chinese descent. Tan speaks mainly English, Malay, Penang Hokkien, and some Cantonese.

Tan attended a school in Petaling Jaya, where teachers used a cane to discipline the children for speaking in class or failing to do homework.

As a teenager he was a huge fan of synth-pop music bands like Pet Shop Boys, A-HA, OMD and Depeche Mode.

Tan studied law at the University of London and later worked as an advocate and solicitor in intellectual property law in one of Kuala Lumpur's leading law firms before becoming a full-time writer.

He has a first-dan ranking in aikido and lives in Malaysia.

His first novel, The Gift of Rain, published in 2007, was long-listed for the Man Booker Prize. It is set in Penang before and during the Japanese occupation of Malaya in World War II. The Gift of Rain has been translated into Italian, Spanish, Greek, Romanian, Czech, Serbian, French, Russian and Hungarian.

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