[1] Tan attended a school in Petaling Jaya, where teachers used a cane to discipline the children for speaking in class or failing to do homework.
It is set in Penang before and during the Japanese occupation of Malaya in World War II.
The Gift of Rain has been translated into Italian, Spanish, Greek, Romanian, Czech, Serbian, French, Russian and Hungarian.
[10][11] The novel was adapted into a film starring Hiroshi Abe, Lee Sin-je, John Hannah, David Oakes and Sylvia Chang, which was released in 2020.
[citation needed] He is one of the judges of the International Booker Prize 2023, the first Malaysian author to be appointed to that role.