Written as long ago as 1925, this novel seems always to have provoked critical disagreement; some have praised, it as one of Maugham's best works, while others have correspondingly dismissed it as being both prurient and sentimental. Most of the story is set in Hong Kong where Kitty Fane, the beautiful but frivolous wife of a bacteriologist, has an affair with a high ranking colonial servant. Unwillingly she accompanies her, husband to a plague stricken area of the Chinese mainland, where he dies and her whole life is changed. Maugham knew this colonial world well and was always at his best in seamy atmospheres and in dealing with dubious people. Not a masterpiece, but the work of a master artificer, and it still reads well and easily in spite of some emotional falsify.