Malaysian author Tan Twan Eng’s latest novel The House of Doors has just been included on the longlist for the Booker Prize. Devika Misra recently attended An Evening with Tan Twan Eng in Singapore and here paraphrases some of the conversation.
The House of Doors is a multi layered yet very readable work of historical fiction. The narrative explores Tan Twan Eng's characteristic themes of love, loss, longing and betrayal, and is set in colonial Malaya, as are his previous works, The Gift of Rain (2007), and The Garden of Evening Mists ( 2012). But this time Tan Twan Eng has taken the arguably audacious step of fictionalizing legendary writer Somerset Maugham. Maugham had in fact himself fictionalized the tale of crime and scandal that is narrated to him by the female protagonist in The House of Doors. She is part of the expatriate community in Penang; he portrays her, and her community, with subtle criticism and nuanced sympathy.
Tan Twan Eng was inevitably asked: what was the genesis of The House of Doors?
TTE : "Well, actually there are two origins for this novel. One of them is Somerset Maugham and the other one is Dr. Sun Yat- Sen…I first read Somerset Maugham's short story The Letter when I was in my teens. I loved it very much. I found it very gripping and exciting. I was even more intrigued when I found out that he had based The Letter on an actual murder trial, which had taken place in Kuala Lumpur in 1910. The murder trial of Ethel Proudlock, who was accused of murdering a man she claimed had tried to rape her. The only problem with her justification of killing him was that she shot him five times, … six times, and four in the back as he was running away. So there was all this scandal about Ethel Proudlock. I felt that this would make a very interesting novel about how Somerset Maugham came to write and hear about this one. That's how it started. So I had Somerset Maugham, except I didn't know what to do with him, because obviously the story isn't substantial enough for a full-length novel."
