From a tormented orphan with a clubfoot, Philip Carey evolves into an impressionable young man with an insatiable hunger for adventure and knowledge. His desires lead him to Paris at eighteen, where he tries his luck in the arts before returning to London to study medicine. Yet even that cannot quell his tormenting hunger for experience. He then falls obsessively in love and begins a disastrous relationship that will change his life forever. A young man struggling for self-fulfillment becomes entangled in a destructive affair with a waitress, in a novel about sexual obsession, self-discovery, and the complexity of human relationships.