Malaysian author Tan Twan Eng has been announced this year's recipient of the 2012 Man Asian prize for his novel "The Garden of Evening Mists".

Malaysian author Tan Twan Eng took home the 2012 Man Asian prize for his novel "The Garden of Evening Mists". The novel was also nominated last year for the Booker prize. Judge Maya Jaggi credits the book for its "probing intelligence and stylistic poise."

"Taking its aesthetic cues from the artful deceptions of Japanese landscape gardening," she said, "it opens up a startling perspective on converging histories, using the feints and twists of fiction to explore its themes of personal and national honor; love and atonement; memory and forgetting; and the disturbing co-existence of cultural refinement and barbarism."

The novel is about the aftermath of the Second World War and the author tells the story of a lawyer who seeks solace in a mountain-top garden after surviving a Japanese war camp and becoming involved in the prosecution of Japanese war criminals. Her friendship with a Japanese gardener is threatened by Malaysia's recent history and its political breakdown.

"The layering of historical periods is intricate, the descriptions of highland Malaysia are richly evocative, and the characterization is both dark and compelling," said Jaggi. "Guarding its mysteries until the very end, this is a novel of subtle power and redemptive grace."

The prize is worth $30,000. Other authors to have won the prize previously include Bi Feiyu, Su Tong and Jiang Rong. The award was first given away in 2007.