Jean Rhys' late, literary masterpiece Wide Sargasso Sea was inspired by Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre, and is set in the lush, beguiling landscape of Jamaica in the 1830s. Born into an oppressive, colonialist society, Creole heiress Antoinette Cosway meets a young Englishman who is drawn to her innocent sensuality and beauty. After their marriage the rumours begin, poisoning her husband against her. Caught between his demands and her own precarious sense of belonging, Antoinette is driven towards madness.

Voyage In The Dark was first published in 1934, but it could have been written today. It is the story of an unhappy love affair, a portrait of a hypocritical society, and an exploration of exile and breakdown; all written in Jean Rhys' hauntingly simple and beautiful style. Eighteen, on her own and independent as much through circumstance as character, Anna has exchanged the West Indies of her childhood for the cold greyness of England, with its narrow streets and narrower rules. As she drifts towards the demi-monde of 1914 London, she comes to realise that life will never be so free and easy again. Her childish dreams have been replaced by the harsher reality of living in a man's world, where all charity has its price.