After a few months studying in Heidelberg, and a short patch in Paris as a would-be artist, Philip Carey, an orphan keen for life, love and venture, settles in London to train as a doctor. Vibrant and enthralling, down among the dingy slums of Lambeth, eighteen-year-old Liza is the darling of Vere Street. Subscribe to our mailing list and get interesting stuff and updates to your email inbox. He there meets a flashy but resistless waitress, named Mildred, with whom he dips into a tormented and masochistic affair. And as passion dies, she recovers herself treed in a loveless, tyrannous marriage. “Such critics as noticed them had little good to say of them. The Magician is one of Somerset Maugham’s most complex and perceptive novels, a bewitching tale of secrets and calamitous attraction. Maugham then explains why those three books were considered hopeless failures. William Somerset Maugham is an English playwright, novelist and short story writer. Other than being an excellent author, Maugham had a doctor’s degree and had a great experience as an obstetrician. To follow up on his artistic vision, Charles Strickland, who is a staid banker, a man of wealth and privilege, leaves London for Paris and Tahiti, and in his quest makes forfeits that leave the lives of those closest to him in shreds.

On the day her older and prosperous friend asks her to marry him, Mary Leonard demurrers and decides to hold over her reply a few days. A young woman, swayed away by passion, sees a prospect to break away a dull life and to experience true love. Divested of the British society of her youth and the small but efficient society, she struggled so hard to reach Hong Kong, Kitty Fane, a beautiful yet love-starved woman, is compelled by her rousing moral sense to re-evaluate her life and learn how to love. But then Kear keys out the great novelist's sybaritic muse (and unlikely first wife), Rosie, the woman who had given Driffield enough material to last a lifetime, but now casts a mortifying shadow over his career and respect. But driving into the hills above Florence alone that evening, Mary offers a drive to a handsome stranger. And suddenly, her life is utterly, irrevocably castrated. Bonus 25% off Fire tablets with Amazon Trade In. The story revolves around these folks who are intimate acquaintances, but less than friends, they meet and part in postwar London and Paris. An assignment whose risk and drama invoked both- his sense of romance and the absurd. Learn how your comment data is processed. Maugham points out that three of the books on his list were considered “dead failures when first published,” referring to Moby-Dick, The Red and the Black, and Wuthering Heights.

Limited-time offer. He is not one flashy writer rather his writing flair is characterized by regardless elegance, emotional simplicity, an admirable transparency and sharp observation. Everyone approves, and everyone appears to be enjoying themselves—until the baleful and detestable Oliver Haddo comes along.