In the jungle-lined plantations of Malaya in 1949, Japanese war camp survivor and Cambridge law grad Yun Ling Teoh forms an unlikely friendship with the exiled former gardener of the Emperor of Japan as both characters attempt to suppress past secrets and rebuild their lives amid the lush landscape even as guerilla violence intensifies around them. Jaggi calls the novel “a profound exploration of personal and national honor; guilt and complicity; what it means to atone; and what it takes to forgive.”
