The House of Doors [J0271]

2023 HCDJ in nice clean condition. From the bestselling, Booker Prize-shortlisted author of The Garden of Evening Mists, a spellbinding novel about love and betrayal, colonialism and revolution, storytelling and redemption. The year is 1921. Lesley Hamlyn and her husband, Robert, a lawyer and war veteran, are living at Cassowary House on the Straits Settlement of Penang. When "Willie" Somerset Maugham, a famed writer and old friend of Robert's, arrives for an extended visit with his secretary Gerald, the pair threatens a rift that could alter more lives than one. Maugham, one of the great novelists of his day, is beleaguered: Having long hidden his homosexuality, his unhappy and expensive marriage of convenience becomes unbearable after he loses his savings-and the freedom to travel with Gerald. His career deflating, his health failing, Maugham arrives at Cassowary House in desperate need of a subject for his next book. Lesley, too, is enduring a marriage more duplicitous than it first appears. Maugham suspects an affair, and, learning of Lesley's past connection to the Chinese revolutionary, Dr. Sun Yat Sen, decides to probe deeper. But as their friendship grows and Lesley confides in him about life in the Straits, Maugham discovers a far more surprising tale than he imagined, one that involves not only war and scandal but the trial of an Englishwoman charged with murder. It is, to Maugham, a story worthy of fiction. A mesmerizingly beautiful novel based on real events, The House of Doors traces the fault lines of race, gender, sexuality, and power under empire, and dives deep into the complicated nature of love and friendship in its shadow.

From recent Amazon/GoodReads reviews: "Interesting, especially for someone unfamiliar with Penang, Malaysia And the works of Willie Somerset Maugham"; "The sprinkling of Malaysian culture, especially those of the Chinese quarters during the time of English Colonial rule was a nice ride down history lane. The book exposed two worlds - that of the privileged and also of the suppressed - One's fight for meaning and everything in the first world, and the other's fight for self expression."; "I very much enjoyed this tale of W Somerset Maugham, Sun Yat-sen, Ethel Proudlock (look her up!), and the protagonist, Lesley, an unhappily married woman who is part of all their stories. It's exotic for more than its cast of characters as it's set primarily in Penang, Malaysia, in the 1920s, and Tan's writing evocatively describes both the time and place, deftly weaving all those storylines together. "