The House of Doors: Longlisted for the Booker Prize 2023

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The House of Doors, by Tan Twan Eng, is a work of historical fiction set in the British colony of Penang, Malaya during three time periods, the earliest in 1910 and the next in 1921. A prologue and postscript are set on a farm in South Africa, far from the primary activity of the novel. Tan Twan Eng's brilliantly written book uses historical and narrative drama to create memorable characters seemingly straight out of Somerset Maugham's playbook. Maugham, known as "Willie," with his partner Gerald, shows up in Penang to visit his good friend Robert, a barrister. Robert's wife, Lesley has a penchant for a local artist who has created a house of doors, and Robert, as it turns out, is having an affair with a local man. Lesley also has an interest in Sun Yat Sen and his political trials. Sen was revered by both the Communist Party in China and by the Nationalist Party in Taiwan, and Lesley is definitely an admirer. It’s based true events. It’s a work of fiction; yet it features characters and events drawn from history…a murder in 1911 which Eng set in 1910 to coincide with Sun Yat-Sen’s extended stay in Penang. Lesley is also drawn into the drama of her friend Ethel's trial for murder, another real-life aspect of the plot of the book. The descriptions of Panang, including the casuarina trees on the beach and other tropical scenes could not be more artfully described; the air, the water, and the gardens are painted carefully and beautifully, as are the houses.

The House of Doors was a beautifully written, but ultimately unsatisfying book. Eng did a great job of describing the time and place. But both main characters, Willie (Somerset Maugham) and Lesley, the wife of his old school chum that he’s visiting in Penang, came across as flat.The world is so still, so quiescent, that I wonder if it has stopped turning. But then, high above the land, I see a tremor in the air. A pair of raptors, far from their mountain eyrie. For a minute or two I want to believe they are brahminy kites, but of course they cannot be”. Everyone at Canongate is immensely proud to be publishing this masterful novel next March and we believe that, following Twan’s Booker longlisting and Booker shortlisting, critics and reader alike will fall under the spell of The House of Doors." From the bestselling author of The Garden of Evening Mists, a spellbinding novel about love and betrayal, colonialism and revolution, storytelling and redemption. The doors spun slowly in the air, like leaves spiralling in a gentle wind, forever falling, never to touch the earth.

Following the defeat of the Nazis in 1945, the idea took hold that Austria had been the first casualty of Hitler’s aggression when in 1938 it was incorporated into the Third Reich.’ 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 House of Doors is partly a biographical novel, based on a few facts of William Somerset Maughm's life. It depicts the creative process, how literature and reality intersect, and the clash between mundane everyday life and the writer's creativity. An interesting coincidence: I was thinking how Colm Tóibín’s route in his biography of Thomas Mann, The Magician, was different, and in the evening, I read in The Guardian his enthusiastic opinion on this book: The House of Doors by Tan Twan Eng is fascinating, engrossing and has given me infinite pleasure. I couldn't agree more. At one point, Lesley mentions to Willie that all his stories seem to be about unhappy marriages. Certainly, because of the stigma of divorce, couples stayed married regardless of their happiness and often sought out affairs instead. This plays out in this book as well. You would think with all the various love affairs and high emotions, the story would have been livelier. But sad to say, it came across as dry and lifeless to me.Lesley missed her garden — the trees she planted - flowers, shrubs, their high ceilings in Cassowary House, her old busy life of the different committees she was on, but with time, she did adjust realizing she no longer cared about those things. Ai, that’s not funny, Bernard,’ his wife said. ‘Coincidentally, our GP in the dorp disappeared that same morning,’ Bernard continued. ‘Left his wife behind. Neither hair nor hide of him has ever been seen again.’

W. Somerset Maugham, the famous novelist was an old friend of Robert’s. Robert and Lesley call him Willie. 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. Tan Twan Eng’s novel The House of Doors makes an undeniably compelling tale out of one of the 20th century’s greatest political convulsions, while mixing it with a piece of literary history that is just as complex and beguiling. William Somerset Maugham’s short stories are still popular today, but his initial popularity in literary London relied much on his travels to Asia and the Far East in the Twenties. Tan was born in Penang, Malaysia. The Garden of Evening Mists won the Man Asian Literary Prize 2013 and the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction, and was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2012 and the 2014 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award.On the large map pinned up in his study the lower shores of the Great Karoo lie about a hundred and fifty miles to the north of Doornfontein. But there were days when I felt it was much closer, and I was convinced I could sense its timeless silence reaching out from the deepest heart of the desert – its stillness, its infinite emptiness. It called to my mind a story I had once heard: a pair of explorers, husband and wife, had got lost during an expedition across the Gobi Desert. To hide their growing despair and feelings of hopelessness as they wandered deeper and deeper into the desert, they stopped talking to each other. I often wondered which of the two was more oppressive: the silence of the desert, or the silence between the husband and his wife. It begins and ends in Doornfontein, South Africa in 1947.... with Lesley Hamlin as our narrator. She and Robert moved into a modest bungalow on the property of Robert’s cousin, Bernard, who was a sheep farmer. It was an adjustment for Lesley and Robert …… Maugham is a here a passive character; he is a vessel through which we get to listen to Lesley Hamlyn’s secrets from her past. The writer proves to be an excellent listener, which prompts the disillusioned Lesley to share confidences about events surrounding the visit of the Chinese revolutionary, Sun Yat-sen to Penang and a famous murder. Both the murder and the visit were real events, although the former took place in 1911. The author puts them together to serve his plotting objectives, to positive results, I think. Inspired by David Copperfield, Kingsolver crafts a 21st-century coming-of-age story set in America’s hard-pressed rural South. I have read the author's other books so when I saw this title I knew I had to read it. The author did not disappoint.