Of Human Bondage »

W. Somerset Maugham was born in Paris in 1874. He trained as a doctor in London where he started writing his first novels. In 1926 he bought a house in Cap Ferrat, France, which was to become a meeting place for a number of writers, artists and politicians. He died in 1965.

From the Trade Paperback edition.

From an orphan with a clubfoot, Philip Carey grows into an impressionable young man with a voracious appetite for adventure and knowledge. Then he falls obsessively in love, embarking on a disastrous relationship that will change his life forever.

New Republic

A gorgeous read, as interesting and valuable at the beginning as at the end...compact with the experiences, the dreams, the hopes, the fears, the disillusionment, the ruptures, and the philosophizing of a strangely starved soul, it is a beacon light by which the wanderer may be guided. -- The New Republic