This real-life author befriends society hostess Lesley Hamlyn, a confidant of Dr. Sun Yat Sen and murderess Ethel Proudlock, during a visit to Penang in Tan Twan Eng’s 2023 novel The House of Doors. A line from Christopher Isherwood's translation of the Katha Upanishad titles a novel by this author about a WWI pilot’s search for enlightenment in India. The missionary Davidson fails to moralize a prostitute in Pago Pago named (*) Sadie Thompson in one of many stories this author set on the South Sea, “Rain.” This author created a stockbroker who abandons his family to become an artist in Tahiti in a novel retelling the life of Paul Gauguin. For 10 points, name this British novelist of The Moon and Sixpence, who wrote about the club-footed orphan Philip Carey in Of Human Bondage. ■END■
ANSWER: W. Somerset Maugham [or William Somerset Maugham] (Proudlock is the subject of Maugham’s story “The Letter.” The novel is The Razor’s Edge.)
<RK, British Literature>
= Average correct buzz position