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The House of Doors
by Tan Twan Eng
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Penang, 1921. Lesley Hamlyn and her husband Robert receive the celebrated writer W. Somerset Maugham and his secretary and lover Gerald Haxton at Cassowary House. Maugham arrives ill, short of money and trapped in a marriage that protects his reputation while denying his private life. Searching for material that might restore his fortunes, he recognises that Lesley’s controlled manner conceals experiences more dangerous than the routines of colonial society suggest.
Lesley’s account returns to 1910 and 1911: her involvement with Sun Yat-sen’s revolutionary fundraising in Penang, her friendship with Ethel Proudlock during the sensational Kuala Lumpur murder case, and secrets within her own marriage. As she decides what to reveal, the novel imagines how Maugham transformed lives and scandals into fiction. Historical events and invented confidences become inseparable in a story about colonial privilege, political revolution, suppressed sexuality, betrayal and the uncertain ownership of another person’s story.
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