The Gift Of Rain

Tan Twan Eng's The Gift Of Rain.

The words Malaysian, Chinese and author do not normally go side by side without a snide remark accompanying it. Having grown up with Malay literature and English literature, I know the beauty and immense depth in our sastera Melayu, but English literature had always been a borrowed experience, as we read the Wordsworths and the Shakespeares and the Steinbecks.

I have spent the last month reading through Tan Twan Eng's The Gift Of Rain, however, and here is finally someone to redeem that phrase. I met the book with a little skepticism initially, I must admit, despite it being longlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2008.

But just a few pages in, and the flowing deliberate narrative and eloquent description of a pre-war Malaya transports you back into the shoes of the main character, Philip Hutton, who is a product of his English father's second marriage to his Chinese mother. This division of himself is further accentuated as he befriends and follows the tutelage of a Japanese sensei, and is left to make some very hard decisions during the Japanese invasion of Malaya.

Told with great care and empathy, this book is all the more personal to me because of its settings in my tanahair, and reminds us of the atrocities perpetrated not so long ago, already forgiven with the passing of a generation.

Tan Twan Eng writes like how I would like to write, and this sprawling saga definitely earns its place among the best of the books this year. An important read for all Malaysians, I think!