Book description
Mary Panton walls up her desires in a beautiful villa high up in the
hills above Florence, as she calmly contemplates her disastrous
marriage. But a single act of compassion begins a nightmare of violence
that shatters her serenity. She turns for help to the notorious Rowley
Flint, and through him comes to realise that to deny love, with all its
passions and risks, is to deny life itself. William Somerset Maugham,
famous as novelist, playwright and short-story writer, was born in 1874,
and lived in Paris until he was ten. He was educated at King's School,
Canterbury, and at Heidelberg University. He spent some time at St.
Thomas' Hospital with a view to practising medicine, but left to focus
exclusively on writing. In 1927, he settled in the south of France, and
lived there until his death in 1965.
