William Somerset Maugham

Larry Darrell is a young American in search of the absolute. The progress of this spiritual odyssey involves him with some of Maugham's most brillant characters - his fiancee Isabel, whose choice between love and wealth have lifelong repercussions, and Elliot Templeton, her uncle, a classic expatriate American snob. The most ambitious of Maugham's novels, this is also one in which Maugham himself plays a considerable part as he wanders in and out of the story, to observe his characters struggling with their fates.

The Razor's Edge

The bitter, witty novel about the business of writing and London literary society between the two World Wars focuses on the lives of a famous writer and his two contrasting wives. Reprint. 12,500 first printing.

Cakes and Ale

Leaving wealth and loved ones behind, Larry Darrell journeys to the mountains of India in search of spiritual wisdom

Maugham's enchanting tale of secrets and fatal attraction The Magician is one of Somerset Maugham's most complex and perceptive novels. Running through it is the theme of evil, deftly woven into a story as memorable for its action as for its astonishingly vivid characters. In fin de siecle Paris, Arthur and Margaret are engaged to be married. Everyone approves and everyone seems to be enjoying themselves--until the sinister and repulsive Oliver Haddo appears.

The Magician

The story of the lovely but shallow Kitty Fane, the adulterous wife of a bacteriologist stationed in Hong Kong and of her husband’s revenge.

The Painted Veil

Depois de participar da Primeira Guerra Mundial, o jovem Larry Darrell retorna para sua confortável vida em Chicago. Porém, abalado pela dura e sangrenta experiência da guerra, ele deseja algo além de um bom emprego, de uma bela noiva, de alguns amigos influentes e do vácuo espiritual do seu meio. Darrel quer buscar outro propósito na vida, afora 'semear e morrer'. Para encontrar uma resposta à sua angústia existencial, rompe com tudo e parte pelo mundo para buscar a si mesmo.

O fio da navalha

After a lonely boyhood, and the painful ordeal of his schooldays, Philip's yearning for adventure takes him to Germany and later Paris where he tries to make his mark as an artist before returning to London to study medicine. Here, a tortured and one-sided love affair with Mildred, a vulgar yet irresistible waitress, changes the course of his life for ever. Commenting later on the novel's autobiographical aspects, Maugham recalled how in writing the book he mingled fact and fiction and 'found myself free from the pains and unhappy recollections that had tormented me'.However, like Dickens' David Copperfield to which it is often compared, Of Human Bondage goes far beyond autobiography, and is Maugham's most ambitious and unsparing novel, revealing the author's undoubted gift for storytelling as he explores the timeless theme of human freedom - freedom to act, to think and to love.

Of Human Bondage

When war broke out in 1914, Somerset Maugham was dispatched by the British Secret Service to Switzerland under the guise of completing a play. Multilingual, knowledgeable about many European countries and a celebrated writer, Maugham had the perfect cover, and the assignment appealed to his love of romance, and of the ridiculous. The stories collected in Ashenden are rooted in Maugham's own experiences as an agent, reflecting the ruthlessness and brutality of espionage, its intrigue and treachery, as well as its absurdity.

Ashenden

The Summing Up

Short stories, all born of Maugham's experiences in Malaya, Singapore and other outposts of the former British Empire. Whether portraying a ship-borne flight from a lover's curse, murder in the jungle or the remembered East of a repatriate's suburban home, they reveal Maugham as a shrewd and human judge of character and soul.

Far Eastern Tales

Kitty Fane's affair with Assistant Colonial Secretary Townsend, a married man, is interrupted when she is taken from Hong Kong by her vengeful bacteriologist husband to accompany him to his new post amid a raging cholera epidemic. Reprint. 12,500 first printing.

A Writer's Notebook

Julia Lambert is in her prime, the greatest actress in England. On stage she is a true professional, in full possession of her emotions. It seems that nothing can ruffle her feathers, until a quiet stranger challenges Julia's very sense of self. As a result, she will endure rejection for the first time, her capacity as a mother will be affronted, and her ability to put on whatever face she desired for her public will prove limited.

Театр

Storie ciniche

Servidão humana

Il filo del rasoio

Labih-ʼī tīgh

From a distant island in the Malay Archipelago, Dr. Saunders - the best eye doctor in the East - sets sail with two intriguing characters. Money has talked the shifty Capt. Nichols into whisking a young Australian, Fred Blake, over the horizon for a discreet period. But it is love that lures luckless Fred into disaster.

The Narrow Corner

Pico Iyer

Collects W. Somerset Maugham's writing on travel, including "In the land of the blessed virgin" and "A partial view."

Selected Travel Writing

The Skeptical Romancer

A club-footed orphan struggles for independence, his intellectual development and his attempt to become an artist.

William Somerset Maugham

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