Many of you will remember The Garden of Evening Mists which won the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction and was shortlisted for the Man Booker.  It’s a long-standing in-house favourite at Mainstreet, so we were just a bit excited about this event…

Based on the true story behind W Somerset Maugham’s The Letter, The House of Doors is a novel of love, betrayal and morality in 1920s Penang.  It is 1921 and, at Cassowary House in the Straits Settlements of Penang, Robert Hamlyn is a well-to-do lawyer and his steely wife Lesley a society hostess. Their lives are invigorated when Willie, an old friend of Robert’s, comes to stay – together with his charming secretary, Gerald.

The House of Doors expertly interweaves three true stories: Somerset Maugham’s 1921 visit to Malaya; Chinese revolutionary Sun Yat Sen’s fundraising trip there a decade earlier; and the sensational trial for murder of Ethel Proudlock the same year, on which Maugham’s famous short story and play The Letter was later based.