Sin and green shutters: both entailed lots of unexpected consequences that weren’t easy to see at first glance . . .

In the autumn years of his illustrious career, ‘The Great’ Emile Maugin, a celebrated actor, receives devastating news: he does not have long left to live. Hounded by rage, alcoholism and the memories of his fractured childhood in the Vendée marshes, he haunts the stage doors and dimly-lit bars of pre-war Paris. Yet, faintly visible on the horizon of his mind, stands a white house with green shutters and manicured lawns, whose inhabitants lead the ‘normal life’ that lies just beyond Maugin’s reach.

First published in 1950, The Green Shutters cuts to the depths of the human soul and asks: what is left to us when time runs out?