LONGLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE 2023
A SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER
A FINANCIAL TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR
A NEW STATESMAN BOOK OF THE YEAR
A NEW YORKER BOOK OF THE YEAR
A WASHINGTON POST BOOK OF THE YEAR
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.
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.
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.
Format: Paperback
Pages: 320
Imprint: Canongate UK
Publication date: 07/03/2024
The House of Doors
By Tan Twan Eng
Review by Marija
After an 11-year wait, Tan Twan Eng’s new book is finally here, and it is a book to savour. Set in 1920’s British colony of Penang (today’s Malaysia), the book revolves around a very well-to-do couple, and the visit of their friend, the writer Somerset Maugham. The motifs running through the story are the universal human drivers – desire, duty, and love. Eng is a mesmerizing writer – his graceful, atmospheric prose weaving characters, storylines, times, and places with aching poignancy. His language is precise, and at the same time effortlessly free-flowing and poetic. I kept re-reading sentences, simply for the beauty of expression contained within.
