‘Books need time’: Tan Twan Eng’s new novel opens door on history

Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia – It’s been ten years since Tan Twan Eng’s second novel, The Garden of Evening Mists, seduced readers around the world and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and a slew of other literary prizes.

This month, the Malaysian best-selling author finally published his third book, The House of Doors.

“It’s going slowly,” Tan admits with a rueful smile in a video call from his office in South Africa.

Dressed in a suit and sitting at a desk, he looks more like the lawyer he once was than the stereotypical writer, but the shelves on the walls behind him are full of books.

“There are many more on the floor,” he laughs.

One of the reasons for the new novel’s slow progress was the whirlwind of publicity and speaking engagements that accompanied the Booker nomination.

But as the promotion appointments came to a close and Tan got to work, it became clear that the core of a project he had expected to be his third novel was too big.

Instead, he returned to an idea based on Chinese nationalist revolutionary Sun Yat Sen, who spent time in Penang in the early 20th century raising money from his headquarters on Armenian Street in George’s historic center Town, which is now a World Heritage Site.

But bringing the novel to life turned out to be a bigger struggle than Tan expected.

“I thought I didn’t need to do a lot of research for this one,” says Tan, a Penang native whose parents lived on Armenian Street in the 1950s.

“It didn’t work for a variety of reasons,” he says, admitting there were times when he couldn’t open his laptop because “I knew it was going to be terrible and I didn’t know what to do.”

At one point, Tan even considered giving up on the book altogether.

“The story was wrong. The characters didn’t come to life. My structure was all wrong,” he explains.

It took the intervention of his agent—who recommended Canongate’s general publisher, Francis Bickmore, review the manuscript—to restore Tan’s confidence in what he had written.

“Bless him, he loved it right away,” Tan recalled of Bickmore’s response. Together they worked on shaping the work, mainly by tackling the structure and moving some chapters.

The former Kuala Lumpur lawyer first entered the global literary scene with his 2007 debut novel, The Gift of Rain, set in Penang during the Japanese occupation that heralded the end of British rule. Longlisted for the Booker, it inevitably drew comparisons to the work of fellow Malaysian writer Tash Aw whose first novel, The Harmony Silk Factory, was set in Penang on the brink of occupation and had also been longlisted for two years. for the price. for.

Unsurprisingly, Tan’s work stems from a passion for history and Malaysia’s sometimes painful past.

While there has been much discussion of fiction being mistaken for fact, Tan sees the historical novel as a starting point for research and debate.

“The novel doesn’t preach to you or deceive you,” he says. “You think about how you want to interpret the past. If you get upset, uncomfortable, or angry about something, it’s a good incentive to learn more about that particular event.”

Malaysia became independent in 1957, leaving behind nearly 450 years of colonial rule, first by the Portuguese, then by the Dutch, and finally by the British.

The British cleared plantations from the dense jungle, making the country the world’s largest exporter of rubber, and developed a thriving tin industry, with legions of ethnic Indian and Chinese migrants keeping the colonial economy afloat.

A system of divide and rule helped the British maintain control over the country’s increasingly diverse population, while the colonial emigrants lived a world apart, trying to create a little England in the tropics, complete with its clubs, churches and poky social structures.

For example, women were not allowed in the bar of the Tudor-style Selangor Club in Kuala Lumpur, located in the heart of Kuala Lumpur and the favorite hangout of the colonial-era elite.

The club is still there, although the ground that the British called the ‘padang’ and used to play cricket is now known as ‘Dataran Merdeka’ or Independence Square.

“I’m interested in how different they did things back then, but also how similar; it’s relevant for today,” says Tan. “You have to write what appeals to you.”

Colonial scandal

The House of Doors is set in the 1920s, and Tan found that the element that would make the book work was the author, Somerset Maugham, and his fictionalized account of the demise of Ethel Proudlock – the wife of a Kuala Lumpur headteacher who was tried and convicted of murder in a case that scandalized the city’s conservative colonial society.

So was Maugham’s account of it, The Letter, which was published in his acclaimed collection of short stories, The Casuarina Tree, to the horror of those who had welcomed Maugham into their homes.

While Sun, Maugham and Proudlock are all real people, it’s the fictional characters – and in particular Leslie Hamlyn, the Penang-born British expatriate woman who comes to reveal her secrets and Ethel Proudlock’s to Maugham – that help tie the story together .

Like his two previous novels, The House of Doors is very evocative of time and place, the “opium-hollowed rib cages” of the rickshaw riders, a sea that is “emerald green and turquoise and dotted with a million white scratches” and the shadows of clouds that “crush the earth”.

Tan says he was “relieved” by the initial reviews of the novel.

The United Kingdom’s Financial Times described the book as “expertly constructed, tautly plotted and richly atmospheric”. The Literary Review said Tan had “woven a fantastic, quietly complex tale of love, duty and betrayal”.

In recent months, Tan was one of five judges this year for the International Booker Prize, which is awarded to the best work of fiction translated into English and published in the UK and Ireland.

This year’s winner will be announced in London on May 23.

“It was eye-opening,” Tan says of the review process. “I discovered a lot of books that I thought… Wow… these books should get more exposure.”

Admitting that the ideas for his own books do not come easily, he is already thinking about what he might write next.

“Maybe I’ll go back to my old project,” says Tan.

He hopes it won’t be 10 years before his fourth novel is released, but he wonders how some writers manage to release a book every year or two.

“Some books take time. Some writers need time.”