Book description
On his way home from a remote Pacific island, Dr Saunders travels with
two strangers: the treacherous Captain Nichols, and Fred, a handsome
Australian with a shadowy past. Driven to shelter from a storm on the
island of Kanda, the trio meet good-natured Erik Christessen and his
fiancée, the cool and beautiful Louise. A tense, exotic tale of love,
jealousy, murder and suicide, which evolved from a passage in Maugham's
earlier masterpiece,
The Moon and Sixpence
. 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.
