Ethics of memory and the dilemma of forgiveness in Tan Twan Eng's novels

Drawing on memory studies and trauma theory, this essay examines the dilemma of forgiveness and the ethics of memory in Malaysian Chinese writer Tan Twan Eng's English‐language novels The Gift of Rain (2007) and The Garden of Evening Mists (2012) in the context of Malaysia's Look East policy. It explores how Tan revisits the history of the Second World War in Southeast Asia and intervenes in unresolved ethical questions about memory, forgiveness, and reconciliation in contemporary Asia. I argue that Tan's novels evoke the traumatic legacies of the Japanese occupation in Malaysia and delineate the protagonists' negotiations between preserving wartime memory and healing personal trauma. Rather than endorsing postwar retribution, Tan's works meditate on the complexities of restoring justice and achieving reconciliation. Both novels ultimately seek to reconcile the ethical obligation to remember with the desire for peace and thus propose nonviolent reconciliation. By framing reconciliation not as a settled outcome but as an ongoing process, Tan invites readers to reconsider contemporary inter‐Asian relations between Japan and the countries affected by its wartime occupation.