Excerpt from The House of Doors by Tan Twan Eng, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

Prologue

Lesley

Doornfontein, South Africa, 1947

A story, like a bird of the mountain, can carry a name beyond the clouds, beyond even time itself. Willie Maugham said that to me, many years ago.

He has not appeared in my thoughts in a long time, but as I gaze at the mountains from my stoep on this autumn morning I can hear his thin, dry voice, his diction precise, correct, like everything else about him. In my memory I see him again, on his last night in our old house on the other side of the world, the two of us on the verandah behind the house, talking quietly, the full moon a coracle of light adrift above the sea. Everyone else in the house had already retired to bed. When morning came he sailed from Penang, and I never saw him again.

Ten thousand days and nights have drifted down the endless river since that evening. I live on the shores of a different sea now, a sea of silent stone and sand.

Half an hour earlier I was finishing my breakfast on the stoep when I noticed, on the ridge below, a familiar figure pedalling up the steep and dusty dirt road. I followed him with my eyes as he came over the rise and coasted down the short, poplar-lined driveway. Reaching the stoep he dismounted from his bicycle and propped it against its kickstand.

'Goeie more, Mrs Hamlyn,' he called out.

'Morning, Johan.'

He took out a parcel from his saddlebag, came onto the stoep and handed it to me. The parcel was wrapped in heavy brown paper and secured with two loops of twine, but I could tell that it was a book. Robert had been dead nearly six years now, but his post – catalogues and gifts of books from antiquarian booksellers in London, newsletters from his clubs – continued to trickle its way here long after I had informed the senders of his death.

'It's not for Mr Hamlyn,' said Johan. 'It's for you.'

'Oh?' I patted around my pockets for my reading glasses, put them on and squinted at the name typed on the parcel: Mrs Lesley C.Hamlyn.

For a moment or two I continued to stare at my own name. Except for the monthly letter from my son in London, I couldn't remember when last I had received any post addressed to me.

Johan pointed to the stamps. 'Funny-looking bird.'

'It's a hornbill,' I said. The bird's large, curved beak and heavy, bony quiff gave it a comical appearance. It perched on a branch above the words 'B.M.A. MALAYA'. 'Keep them for me?' I blinked at him. 'What? Oh. Yes, of course.' I put the package down on the table. 'Cup of tea, Johan?'

He shook his head. 'Full bag of mail today.' He turned to go, but I stopped him. 'Wait, Johan.' I hurried inside the house and returned a moment later with a small paper bag. 'Some koeksusters for you.'

'Baie dankie! Yours are the best, even better than Tannie Elsie's.'

'You'd better not let her hear that.'

'Ja, she's still sore you won best melktert at the kerk basaar. She told my mother you shouldn't even be allowed to enter the competition.'

Even after twenty-five years there were still some people in the district who saw me as an outsider.

Johan was looking at me, a slightly worried expression on his face. He nodded at the package he had brought me. 'I hope it's not bad news?'

I did not answer him. I watched him as he pedalled away and disappeared down the road. Returning to the table, I sat down, drew the parcel towards me and examined it. There was no return address, but the postmarks, smudged like aged tattoos, told me that it had been mailed from Penang sometime in September 1946. The tangle of overlapping addresses by different hands had somehow managed to pick up my wind-blown spoor: the package had been sent to Robert's old chambers in London, before being forwarded to our solicitor in Cape Town and, almost half a year after it had been posted from Penang, it had found me on this sheep farm fifteen miles outside Beaufort West.

Excerpted from The House of Doors by Tan Twan Eng. Copyright © 2023 by Tan Twan Eng. Excerpted by permission of Bloomsbury Publishing. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.