An audience with Tan Twan Eng, winner of this year's Man Asian Literary Prize

Tan Twan Eng knows all there is to know about Japanese gardens, can tell you all about Boer war postmarks, and he's even something of an expert on tattoos. It all went into his second novel, , which last week won the prestigious Man Asian Literary Prize.

Not that the Malaysian lawyer turned author has much of a green thumb. In fact, he admits to having absolutely no interest in gardening. "One of the reasons it took so long to write the book was because I was very reluctant to write about gardening. I kept trying to think of ways to circumvent it."

But there was no way around it - the garden is central to the novel. It's a character in its own right, he says. And all the time he was trying to avoid writing about it, gardens were seeping into his life. "My friends in Cape Town constantly talk about their gardens or some flower, or they go to the west coast because the flowers are in bloom and you can see fields of them. So listening to them, I suppose I was influenced."

What was a KL city boy doing in Cape Town? It all started in 2004 when he decided to take what he calls a "gap year". But it was anything but a year of lolling around. He was an intellectual property specialist in a prestigious law firm but he was losing interest in the law and wanted an excuse to get away for a little while. His exit ticket was a master's degree at Cape Town University.

During that "gap year", which he stretched to almost two, he completed not only his master's, but his first novel as well - . Not the average lazy student lifestyle.

"It could be the Asian way of studying," he says. "My study notes are organised. I draw charts with various headings and then memorise them. I take a mental snapshot of the chart so then in the exam if I can't remember something I think of the structure of the chart and zoom in."