A Many Splendoured Thing

A Many-Splendoured Thing is a novel by Han Suyin that was a bestseller when first published in London in 1952 by Jonathan Cape. The book was made into the 1955 film Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing, which also inspired a famous song. In her autobiographical work, My House Has Two Doors, she evinced no interest in even watching the film in Singapore, where it ran for several months. Her motive in selling the film rights was to pay for an operation in England for her adopted daughter who was suffering from pulmonary tuberculosis.

It tells the story of a married British foreign correspondent called Mark Elliot (Ian Morrison in real life and based in Singapore where he lived with his wife and children), who falls in love with a Eurasian doctor originally from Mainland China who trained at the London Royal Free Hospital Medical College in London University, only to encounter prejudice from her family and from Hong Kong society. On the surface it is a love story but there is a historical perspective relating to China, Hong Kong, and the peoples and societies that populated the island. This includes many who have fled from the final stages of the Chinese Civil War, both Chinese and Europeans long settled in China.

Although it is technically a novel, the book is strongly autobiographical. Han Suyin's real-life lover was killed during the Korean War in 1950. Two years later, she married Leon F. Comber, a British officer in the Malayan Special Branch. Han Suyin died in November 2012, aged 95.