The House of Doors

A poignant, captivating novel about the nature of love and betrayal, about the fault lines that run through race, gender, and sexuality, about crime, and, ultimately, about the nature of power in empire and human dignity. The year is 1921. Leslie Hamlin and her husband Robert, a lawyer and war veteran, live on the picturesque Malay island of Penang in a white settlement. When Robert's old friend, the famous writer William Somerset Maugham, arrives on the island with his secretary Gerald, the couple brings a shockwave into Hamlin's life that could change many things. Maugham is in a critical situation: he has just lost all his savings, his career is in decline, his health is failing, and most of all, he desperately needs a topic for his next book. And Leslie gives him this topic, revealing to the writer his own story, far more amazing than anyone could imagine.