Open this volume at any page and you will see immediately why Somerset Maugham is regarded as a master of the short story. His unerring eye for the essence of character and situation, his economy of means, his purity of language, his sense of colour and comedy, his ability to express the universal through the local, are all at work in these tales. The greatest blend a feeling for drama he acquired in the theatre with the dispassionate eye for human affliction which came with his medical training. Maugham is famously the poet of empire in decline, but these stories of people under pressure in all four quarters of the world remain timeless in their appeal.

About the Author 

William Somerset Maugham, famous as novelist, playwright and short-story writer, 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 a view to practising medicine, but the success of his first novel, Liza of Lambeth, published in 1897, won him over to letters. 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. His position as a successful playwright was being consolidated at the same time. His first play, A Man of Honour, was followed by a series of successes just before and after World War I.