Living in Paris with her reckless, vagabond husband Stephan, Marya is very near to being happy. She enjoys their haphazard existence, never questioning how he lives, never wanting to know the truth. When Stephan is suddenly imprisoned she is left penniless and alone. Taken up by a sophisticated English couple, the Heidlers, who gradually overwhelm her with their own desires, Marya finds her sense of reality slipping further and further away.

Set against a background of winter-wet streets and smoke-filled cafés, Jean Rhys's first novel is both poignant and disturbingly intimate in its vivid depiction of a woman on her own.

‘She is loved not just for a talent that seems as spontaneous and individual in its personality as physical beauty, but for a special kind of courage’ – Guardian