Larry Darrell is a young American in search of the absolute. The progress of this spiritual odyssey involves him with some of Maugham’s most brilliant characters – his fiancée Isabel, whose choice between love and wealth has lifelong repercussions, and Elliot Templeton, her uncle, a classic expatriate American snob. The most ambitious of Maugham’s novels, this is also one in which Maugham himself plays a considerable part as he wanders in and out of the story to observe his characters struggling with their fates.

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.