The House of Doors by Tan Twan Eng

From the bestselling, Booker Prize-shortlisted authorof The Garden of
Evening Mists, a spellbinding novelabout 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.

Tan Twan Engwas born in Penang and lived in various places in Malaysia as
a child. His first novel, The Gift of Rain, was longlisted for the Man Booker. His
second, The Garden of Evening Mists was a major international bestseller,
shortlisted for the Man Booker, and winner of the Man Asia Literary Prize and
the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction. It was adapted into an awardwinning film in 2019 that was directed by Tom Lin. Twan divides his time
between Malaysia and South Africa.

Bloomsbury
On Sale: Oct 17/23
6.13 x 9.25 • 320 pages
9781639731930 • $38.99 • CL - With dust jacket
Fiction / Historical