Tan Twan Eng’s outstanding debut novel, THE GIFT OF RAIN , which was long-listed for the 2007 Man Booker Prize, is a literary page-turner set against an atmospheric evocation of Malaya just before and during the tumult of the Second World War. With a broad sweep of history that embraces the Chinese, Japanese, British, and Malayan cultural cross-pollination of the region, Tan tells a riveting and poignant tale about a young man’s unwitting role in a tangle of wartime loyalties and deceits.