Based on real events, Tan Twan Eng's new novel of love and betrayal under the shadow of Empire.

Penang, 1921: Lesley Hamlyn and her husband Robert are visited by Willie, an old friend of Robert's, known to the world as the great novelist Somerset Maugham.

Willie is in an unhappy marriage, suddenly penniless and now struggling to write. But before he leaves to face his demons, Lesley finds herself confessing to him her innermost secrets, concerning a Chinese revolutionary and an Englishwoman accused of murder. What she tells him, could blow her marriage apart.

Today: from Africa in 1947, Lesley looks back on the moment Willie arrived with his secretary, Gerald - a two-week visit that threatened to change all their lives.

Writer: Tan Twan Eng is the author of the Man Booker-longlisted The Gift of Rain, and The Garden of Evening Mists, which won the Man Asian Literary Prize, 2012, and was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize.
Readers: Hattie Morahan + Julian Rhind-Tutt
Abridger: Richard Hamilton
Producer: Justine Willett Show less