About the book: 2001 / William Somerset Maugham (1874–1965), English novelist, playwright, creator of brilliant short stories that have retained their charm to this day, the highest paid writer of his time , who collaborated with British intelligence during two world wars, a man who communicated with such representatives of the political and cultural elite as Winston Churchill, Matisse, Chagall, Laurence Olivier, Vivien Leigh, lived a long, dramatic, controversial and complex life, which, however, it matches its no less dramatic, controversial and complex era.