It’s been over a decade since Malaysian author Tan Twan Eng’s last novel, the Booker-shortlisted The Garden Of Evening Mists. But they say good things come to those who wait, and with his new work of historical fiction, that patience is richly rewarded. The House Of Doors takes us to colonial Penang in 1921 where a series of real events are absorbed into a captivating narrative, at the centre of which we find society hostess Lesley Hamlyn, wife of wealthy lawyer Robert. Into her world comes William Somerset Maugham, one of the most successful writers of his age and an old friend of her husband.

Suffering marriage woes and financial strife, Maugham comes to visit the couple with his secretary, Gerald. The story unfolds as Lesley and Willie slowly reveal secrets to each other, of forbidden love and betrayal, reflecting the impact of society’s expectations on women and gay men in the 1920s. It’s a particularly risky and trusting move on Lesley’s part, knowing Maugham could well use her revelations in his future writing. 

The odd-couple bond between this pair would have made a fine novel in itself. But Tan masterfully plays their tale out against an absorbing historical backdrop of empire, race and colonialism, with revolutionaries plotting the overthrow of the imperial Chinese dynasty, and Lesley’s friend Ethel standing trial for murder (an event which inspired Maugham’s short story, ‘The Letter’). The dexterity with which Tan weaves these multiple and disparate narrative strands into a seamless whole is sublime. His prose is poetic and transporting, shot through with an underlying melancholy, building to an exquisite and unexpected final reveal.

The House Of Doors is published by Canongate on Thursday 18 May.