The House of Doors is based on real events in the lives of William Somerset Maugham and Dr Sun Yat Sen (Sun Wen), a revolutionary fighting to overthrow the imperial dynasty of China.

Tan Twan Eng cleverly structures the novel to mix fact and fiction. As he quotes Maugham: ‘Fact and fiction are so intermingled in my work … I can hardly distinguish one from the other.’

This is my feeling about this novel. Maugham travelled extensively with Gerald, his secretary-companion, listening to fellow travellers and using their stories in his own writing.

Tan Twan Eng narrates Maugham’s stay in Penang with Robert, an old friend, and his wife, Lesley. She becomes the narrator and the source of inspiration for Maugham’s book of short stories.

Maugham combs Lesley’s memory of her relationship with Sun Wen in Penang 10 years earlier. Lesley tells Maugham of her role in a group editing secret documents about corruption of the Chinese Government. She also confides secrets about her personal life – an unhappy marriage, gender choices, and her secret love affair in the House of Doors where Arthur, a Chinese co-worker, leads her. He keeps memories of his culture alive by saving decorated doors of temples and shopfronts, from becoming firewood.

Lesley also reveals her friendship with Ethel, charged with the murder of a man in Penang in 1910. Maugham immortalises this historical story of love and betrayal in The Letter. ‘We will be remembered through our stories … beyond even time itself,’ Maugham tells Lesley.

Tan Twan Eng’s extensive research of Maugham’s writings and Sun Yat Sen’s history gives the narrative authenticity. His description of place and characters is sensual and poetic. The tussle of relationships between individuals and nations and their secrets make this story alluring.

I am motivated to read more of his and Maugham’s books.

Reviewed by Judith Grace

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Tan Twan Eng was born in Penang in 1972 and grew up in Malaysia. He worked as an intellectual property lawyer in Kuala Lumpur. He is the author of two novels, The Gift of Rain (2007), set in Penang before and during the Japanese occupation of Malaya in World War II, longlisted for the 2007 Man Booker Prize for Fiction; and The Garden of Evening Mists (2012), shortlisted for the 2012 Man Booker Prize for Fiction. His novels have been translated into Spanish, Italian, Romanian, Greek, Serbian, Czech, French, German, Dutch, Polish and Chinese. Tan Twan Eng divides his time between Kuala Lumpur and Cape Town.