The House of Doors

<p><b>Tan Twan Eng</b> was born in Penang Malaysia. His debut novel <i>The Gift of Rain</i> was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize in 2007 and has been widely translated. <i>The Garden of Evening Mists </i>won the Man Asian Literary Prize 2012 and the 2013 Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction and was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2012 and the 2014 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award<i>.</i> <i>The House of Doors </i>is his third novel.<br><br>@tan.twan.eng</p> <p><b>LONGLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE 2023<br>LONGLISTED FOR THE WALTER SCOTT PRIZE FOR HISTORICAL FICTION<br>A <i>SUNDAY TIMES </i>BESTSELLER<br>A <i>FINANCIAL TIMES</i> <i>NEW STATESMAN</i> <i>NEW YORKER</i> AND <i>WASHINGTON POST </i>BOOK OF THE YEAR</b><br><br>Willie Somerset Maugham is one of the greatest writers of the early twentieth century. But in 1921 he is beleaguered by an unhappy marriage ill-health and business interests that have gone badly awry. He is also struggling to write.<br><br>His friend Robert Hamlyn offers an escape in the Straits Settlements of Penang where Robert's steely wife Lesley learns to see Willie as he is - a man who has no choice but to mask his true self.<br><br>As Willie prepares to leave Lesley confides in him secrets of her own including how she came to know the charismatic revolutionary Dr Sun Yat Sen. And more scandalous still her connection to an Englishwoman charged with murder in the Kuala Lumpur courts - a tragedy drawn from fact and worthy of fiction.</p> <b>From the Booker-shortlisted author of <i>The Garden of Evening Mists</i> comes an evocative rich tale of love betrayal and morality in 1920s Penang</b> Outstanding . . .<i> The House of Doors</i> again displays [Eng's] talent for atmospheric evocation of place and period . . . Beautifully detailed and encompassing the vagaries of Maugham's life the contours of his creativity and the personal and political tensions covertly quivering through the sultry colony around him <i>The House of Doors </i>is a finely accomplished piece of work Fascinating engrossing and has given me infinite pleasure A tremendous feat of literary imagination. Highly evocative richly observed and entirely convincing it is a tour de force! Expertly constructed tightly plotted and richly atmospheric Sex scandal and Somerset Maugham . . . an elegant meditation on oppression repression and loneliness . . . <i>The House of Doors</i> pays tribute to storytelling itself as a means not just of memorialising but recreating . . . imbued with quiet yearning this a pleasurably old-fashioned novel Perfectly poised . . . a fascinatingly layered novel . . . Through this deceptively lulling atmosphere Twan has woven a superb quietly complex tale of love duty and betrayal If any book is going to beat Tan Twan Eng's <i>The House of Doors</i> to the Booker Prize it'll have to be very good indeed What elevates Eng's book is the sheer beauty of his writing - restrained elegant precise every detail accurate every line considered. Pain loss and disappointment seep from every page as do beauty and compassion . . . Tan Twan Eng resides in the very top row A pleasure to read . . . Tan's style is formal quiet sedate but alive with detail This is Twan's third book and he just keeps getting better. He is a somewhat spiritual writer with a love of gardens but the stories are always about the brutal consequences of ethnic strife revolutionand war. The combination is mesmerising