by Tan Twan Eng
First published 2012
Yun Ling Teoh comes home to the plantation country of Northern Malaya in 1949. She has spent years at Cambridge studying law, then working to bring Japanese war criminals to justice. Now she seeks peace in the jungle landscapes where she spent her childhood. The plantations stretch across the hills she once knew, but the war has changed everything. Yun Ling carries the weight of what she witnessed during the Japanese occupation and the legal proceedings that followed. The familiar terrain offers her a chance to reconnect with the place that shaped her, yet the memories of wartime trauma follow her into this homecoming. She must navigate between her past and present, between the educated woman she became in England and the girl who grew up among these green hills. The story explores how she reconciles her professional duty to seek justice with her personal need for healing in the landscape of her youth.
Genres: literary-fiction, historical-fiction, war, family-drama
Vibes: atmospheric, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: homecoming, past-present, reconciliation
Setting: Northern Malaya, Cambridge, England, Plantation Country
Period: 1949
520 pages · Paperback · W F Howes Ltd (Clipper)
Content warnings: violence, war