![]() First edition | |
Author | Han Suyin |
---|---|
Country | United Kingdom |
Language | English |
Publisher | Jonathan Cape |
Publication date | 1952 |
Media type | Print (book) |
Pages | 384 |
OCLC | 8843292 |
A Many-Splendoured Thing is a novel by Han Suyin that was a bestseller upon publication in London in 1952 by Jonathan Cape. [1] The book was made into the 1955 film Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing , which inspired a popular eponymous song. In her 1980 autobiographical work, My House Has Two Doors , Suyin evinced no interest in watching the film even 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 had pulmonary tuberculosis.[ citation needed ]
The story portrays a married British foreign correspondent named Mark Elliot (Ian Morrison in real life, living in Singapore 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 it has 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 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. [1]
James Clavell was an Australian-born British writer, screenwriter, director, and World War II veteran and prisoner of war. Clavell is best known as the author of his Asian Saga novels, a number of which have had television adaptations. Clavell also wrote such screenplays as those for The Fly (1958) and The Great Escape (1963). He directed the popular 1967 film To Sir, with Love for which he also wrote the script.
Gladys May Aylward was a British-born evangelical Christian missionary to China, whose story was told in the book The Small Woman, by Alan Burgess, published in 1957, and made into the film The Inn of the Sixth Happiness, starring Ingrid Bergman, in 1958. The film was produced by Twentieth Century Fox, and filmed entirely in North Wales and England.
Eileen Chang (traditional Chinese: 張愛玲; simplified Chinese: 张爱玲; pinyin: Zhāng Àilíng; Wade–Giles: Chang1 Ai4-ling2;September 30, 1920 – September 8, 1995), also known as Chang Ai-ling or Zhang Ailing, or by her pen name Liang Jing (梁京), was a Chinese-born American essayist, novelist, and screenwriter. She was a well-known feminist woman writer of Chinese literature, known for portraying life in the 1940s Shanghai and Hong Kong.
Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing is a 1955 Deluxe color American drama-romance film in CinemaScope. Set in 1949–50 in Hong Kong, it tells the story of a married, but separated, American reporter Mark Elliot, who falls in love with a Eurasian doctor originally from China, Han Suyin, only to encounter prejudice from her family and from Hong Kong society.
The World of Suzie Wong is a 1957 novel by British writer Richard Mason. The main characters are Robert Lomax, a young British artist living in Hong Kong, and Suzie Wong, the title character, a Chinese woman who works as a prostitute. The novel has been adapted into a play and spawned two unofficial sequels, a film, and a ballet.
Ann Hui On-wah, is a film director, producer, screenwriter and actress from Hong Kong who is one of the most critically acclaimed filmmakers of the Hong Kong New Wave. She is known for her films about social issues in Hong Kong which include: literary adaptations, martial arts, semi-autobiographical works, women's issues, social phenomena, political changes, and thrillers. She served as the president of the Hong Kong Film Directors' Guild from 2004 to 2006.
Rosalie Matilda Kuanghu Chou was a Chinese-born Eurasian physician and author better known by her pen name Han Suyin. She wrote in English and French on modern China, set her novels in East and Southeast Asia, and published autobiographical memoirs which covered the span of modern China. These writings gained her a reputation as an ardent and articulate supporter of the Chinese Communist Revolution. She lived in Lausanne, Switzerland, for many years until her death.
Liu Yichang, BBS, MH, was a Shanghai-born and Hong Kong-based writer, editor and publisher. He is considered the founder of Hong Kong's modern literature.
Ian Ernest McLeavy Morrison was an Australian journalist and war correspondent for The Times. He was one of the first journalists to be killed in the Korean War. The Academy Award-nominated film Love is a Many-Splendored Thing is based on Morrison's love affair with author Han Suyin in Hong Kong.
Pierre Stephen Robert Payne was an English-born author, known principally for works of biography and history, although he also wrote novels, poetry, magazine articles and many other works. After working in Singapore and China, he moved to the United States in 1946 and became a professor of English literature. From 1954 onwards he lived as a writer in New York.
Love Is a Many Splendored Thing may refer to:
Cameron Road is a street in Tsim Sha Tsui, Kowloon, Hong Kong.
My House Has Two Doors (1980) is one of a multi-book autobiography by Han Suyin. It tells of her life from 1948 to 1980, including the real-life love-affair that was the basis for her 1952 novel A Many-Splendoured Thing. She went from Hong Kong to Malaya, where she witnessed the Communist insurgency she described in her 1956 novel And the Rain My Drink. She also tells of her return to China and her impression of the early years of Communist rule.
Man's Fate was an abandoned 1969 film adaptation of the novel Man's Fate by Andre Malraux to have been directed by Fred Zinnemann and produced by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM).
Granville Road is a street in Tsim Sha Tsui, Hong Kong.
Carnarvon Road is a street in Tsim Sha Tsui, Kowloon, Hong Kong. It forms the shape of an uppercase "J", linking Kimberley Road and Nathan Road.
The Mountain Is Young is the fourth novel by Chinese-Flemish author Han Suyin. A love story set in Nepal, it was first published by Jonathan Cape, Ltd. London in 1958. It became a New York Times bestseller in Fiction that same year. It was republished by Penguin Books in 1962, by HarperCollins in 1987 and by Rupa & Co. in 1999.
Love in a Fallen City (傾城之戀) is a 1943 Chinese-language novel by Eileen Chang. The translation is included in the New York Review of Books "Classics" series.
Leonard Francis Comber is a British military and police officer, and later book publisher, operating in British India, Malaya, Singapore, Hong Kong and Australia. He was also an editor and author of books relating to South-East Asia.
Crazy Rich Asians is a satirical 2013 romantic comedy novel by Kevin Kwan. Kwan stated that his intention in writing the novel was to "introduce a contemporary Asia to a North American audience". He claimed the novel was loosely based on his own childhood in Singapore. The novel became a bestseller and was followed by two sequels, China Rich Girlfriend in 2015 and Rich People Problems in 2017. A film adaptation of the novel was released on August 15, 2018.