Book description
Crippled sixteen-year-old Catalina is the one person unable to join
in the festivities of the Feast of the Assumption. But then she has a
vision of the Virgin, and is miraculously cured. In the dark days of
the Spanish Inquisition, such a claim to blessedness has serious
consequences, especially when Catalina seems more inclined to obey her
heart than the demands of the Church.
The last of Maugham's novels, Catalina is a romantic
celebration of Spain and a delightfully mischievous satire on absolutism.
William Somerset Maugham was born in 1874 and lived in Paris until he
was ten. He was educated at King's School, Canterbury, and at Heidelberg
University. He spent some time at St. Thomas' Hospital with the idea of
practising medicine, but the success of his first novel,
Liza of Lambeth,
published in 1897, won him over to literature.
Of Human Bondage
, the first of his masterpieces, came out in 1915, and with the
publication in 1919 of
The Moon and Sixpence
his reputation as a novelist was established. At the same time his fame
as a successful playwright and writer was being consolidated with
acclaimed productions of various plays and the publication of several
short story collections. His other works include travel books, essays,
criticism and the autobiographical
The Summing Up
and
A Writer's Notebook
. In 1927 Somerset Maugham settled in the South of France and lived
there until his death in 1965
