A Subtly Empowering Tale of a Woman Between Worlds

By Aoife Sacker Ooi

August 2023 BOOK REVIEW
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Tan Twan Eng's "The House of Doors". Canongate, 2023.
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Note: This review may contain spoilers.TAN TWAN ENG’S The House of Doors is set mainly in Penang, in 1910 and 1921. The book imagines a backstory to novelist Somerset Maugham’s The Casuarina Tree (1926) and consequent play, The Letter (19S7), inspired by the writer’s travels in Malaysia.Tan takes historical  events, such as Sun Yat Sen’s fundraising tour to the Straits Settlements for his revolution in China, Ethel Proudlock’s murder case and William Somerset Maugham’s The Casuarina Tree, and connects them to fictional...

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Aoife Sacker Ooi

has grown up in Singapore and Malaysia and now studies International Relations and Chinese in SOAS London University. She likes clay sculpting in her free time.

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