你我身边都有这样的朋友──平凡上班族，人届中年，已婚，育有一子，脚踏实地赚钱糊口。说不定，你自己就是这样的人，在这样的生活中不知不觉迈入中年。 《月亮与六便士》里面的主人公查尔斯正是如此，只不过，有一天他突然响应内心的呼唤，留下一张字条，说：晚餐准备好了。就此离经叛道舍弃一切离家出走，一 意追寻他对画画的热爱，到南太平洋的塔希提岛与土著人一起生活，贫病交迫也不再回头。妻子说：梦想？他这种年纪不会持久的，毕竟他都四十岁了，很快他就会 回到我身边。朋友问他：你不认为自己有任何责任义务吗？你到底要什么？查尔斯胆敢成为别人眼中不可理喻的疯子、执迷不悟的傻子、冷酷无情的负心汉，很多人 说他是痴人说梦、浪费生命，甚至不负责任，而只有他知道内心的热情和追求的理想，并以自己喜欢的方式选择了自己的人生道路！但现实生活中，有多少人只是胆 怯地抬头看一眼月亮，又继续低头追逐赖以温饱的六便士？

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Maugham's work has certainly become a part of millions of his fans today. To judge by his short story masterpieces, it was in the tiny crevasses and pinched corners of humanity that Maugham illuminated those elemental qualities that were to fascinate him all his life. In fact, the concept of a "normal" person never entered his mind. He claimed such people simply didn't exist.
Selections in Volume 3:
Rain, perhaps Maugham's most famous story, follows the efforts of a missionary who tries to reform a wayward woman.
The Luncheon describes the hilarious meeting of an impoverished writer and a friend with an appetite.
Episode is an odd story of what happens when love finally gives out.
The Poet is about a man who, in the midst of breathless anticipation, finally gets to meet the most famous poet in Spain.
A Man with a Conscience tells a convict's story of murder and his lack of remorse.
The Kite is the humorous story of what happens when a woman comes between her man and his passion.
The Back of Beyond explores the volcanic emotions that are aroused when a love that is taken for granted is proven false. Listen to more selections in The Short Stories of William Somerset Maugham Volumes I and II. © and (P)2004 Audio Connoisseur

Selections in this Volume:
AN OFFICIAL POSITION To improve his lot, a prisoner in a French penal colony accepts an odious job...and the consequences.
RED This is a poignant love story of youth, beauty and the fleeting moments of ecstasy that pass away only too soon.
THE ALIEN CORN A young Jewish man devotes himself to the pursuit of music over the violent objections of his aristocratic family. As the family wrestles with its Jewish identity, the son flings himself headlong into the Bohemian world of performing artists.
THE VERGER When a lowly verger is fired because of his illiteracy, it turns out to be his lucky day.
MAYHEW A lawyer decides to make a clean break with his past and moves to Capri.
HOME After a lifetime of living abroad, a penniless old sailor finally comes home.
IN A STRANGE LAND While travelling in Turkey, a vacationer meets an extraordinary English woman.
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From 1892, when he was eighteen, until 1949 when this book was first published, Somerset Maugham kept a notebook. It is without a doubt one of his most important works. Part autobiographical, part confessional, packed with observations, confidences, experiments and jottings it is a rich and exhilarating admission into this great writer’s workshop.

Shallow, poorly educated Kitty marries the passionate and intellectual Walter Fane and has an affair with a career politician, Charles Townsend, assistant colonial secretary of Hong Kong. When Walter discovers the relationship, he compels Kitty to accompany him to a cholera-infested region of chinese mainland, where she finds limited happiness working with children at a convent. But when Walter dies, she is forced to leave China and return to England. Generally abandoned, she grasps desperately for the affection of her one remaining relative, her long-ignored father. In the end, in sharp, unexamined contrast to her own behavior patterns, she asserts that her unborn daughter will grow up to be an independent woman. The Painted Veil was first published in 1925 and is usually described as a strong story about a woman's spiritual journey. To more pragmatic, modern eyes, Kitty's emotional growth appears minimal. Still, if not a major feminist work, the book has literary interest. Sophie Ward's uninflected reading is competent if not compelling.

It is the end of the 19th century and Victoria's reign is coming to an end. It is also the end of an era, but no one knows. The landed gentry, so soon to lose their power, are the last to suspect.
Bertha Ley is mistress of Court Ley, a great spread of land. She marries Edward Craddock, a man beneath her station, but quite the essence of new order. A gentleman farmer, he is steady and a doer who turns Court Ley into an efficient farm. But Bertha wants passion and ardor: she gets reality.
"Bertha's tragedy is in her expectations--life would be so simple without them. Her assaults on the amiable Craddock are as rational as beating a flounder for not flying." (Literary Observer)

This collection features one of Maugham's most famous tales, "Rain," concerning the clash between a missionary and a prostitute. It also includes "Macintosh," a psychological study of the competition between two officials; "The Fall of Edward Barnard," a tale of social rebellion that foreshadows "The Razor's Edge"; "The Pool," and other compelling stories of life in the tropics.

Maugham spent the winter months of 1919-20 travelling 1500 miles up the Yangtze River. Always more interested in people than places, he gave full rein to a sensitive and philosophical nature. On a Chinese Screen is the refined accumulation of the countless scraps of paper on which he had taken notes. Within the narrow confines of their colonial milieu, missionaries, consuls, army officers and company managers are all gently ridiculed as they persist obliviously with the life they know.

Maughamas enchanting tale of secrets and fatal attraction "The Magician" is one of Somerset Maughamas most complex and perceptive novels. Running through it is the theme of evil, deftly woven into a story as memorable for its action as for its astonishingly vivid characters. In fin de siA]cle Paris, Arthur and Margaret are engaged to be married. Everyone approves and everyone seems to be enjoying themselvesauntil the sinister and repulsive Oliver Haddo appears.

Based on the life of Paul Gauguin,
is W. Somerset Maugham's ode to the powerful forces behind creative genius. Charles Strickland is a staid banker, a man of wealth and privilege. He is also a man possessed of an unquenchable desire to create art. As Strickland pursues his artistic vision, he leaves London for Paris and Tahiti, and in his quest makes sacrifices that leave the lives of those closest to him in tatters. Through Maugham's sympathetic eye, Strickland's tortured and cruel soul becomes a symbol of the blessing and the curse of transcendent artistic genius, and the cost in humans' lives it sometimes demands.

La dilatada carrera literaria de William Somerset Maugham estuvo colmada de triunfos, en las primeras décadas del siglo XX como autor teatral en Londres, donde llegó a tener hasta cuatro obras en cartel al mismo tiempo –algo que ni siquiera Oscar Wilde logró nunca–, y más tarde como novelista, con éxitos a escala mundial que hicieron que varios de sus libros fueran llevados al cine. Sin embargo, su verdadero talento cristaliza en sus cuentos, en los que a un amplio conocimiento de la vida mundana cosmopolita se unen sus enormes y minuciosas dotes de observación, salpicadas de aguda malevolencia.
Como advierte Vicente Molina Foix en el prólogo, el cuento era para Maugham la narración de un solo acontecimiento, material o psicológico, del que eliminaba todo cuanto no fuera esencial para su propia elucidación y unidad dramática. Heredero de Flaubert y, sobre todo, de Maupassant, se oponía frontalmente a la moda de la época, rendida al mandamiento chejoviano de no acabar los cuentos con un «final» que otorgase todo el sentido dramático al argumento. Prefería huir de los excesos verbales para permanecer fiel al desarrollo lógico del relato, que debía concluir «con un punto final antes que con puntos suspensivos». Lo importante era «narrar hechos» con la mayor naturalidad y lucidez.
Provenientes de épocas muy distintas y de muy variada extensión, los doce cuentos que integran este volumen son una perfecta muestra de su virtuosismo como narrador de historias.
William Somerset Maugham (1874-1965), nacido en la embajada inglesa de París, donde su padre trabajaba como asesor legal, vivió el período efervescente de Inglaterra anterior a la Primera Guerra Mundial –durante la cual llevó a cabo una misión de espionaje en Rusia– y los brillantes años veinte en Londres, París y Nueva York, siempre en contacto con las personalidades culturales más relevantes de su tiempo. En 1928 compró la villa La Mauresque, una finca de casi cinco hectáreas frente al mar, cerca de Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat, en la Riviera francesa, y allí solía pasar largas estancias que intercalaba con frecuentes viajes a América o a lugares remotos de Asia, a bordo de alguno de los transatlánticos de la célebre naviera inglesa P. & O.
Maugham estudió medicina en el hospital Saint Thomas de Londres. El éxito inesperado de una de sus primeras novelas afianzó su vocación literaria. A partir de entonces, el ejercicio de las letras y el teatro le hizo rico y popular. Escribió veintiuna novelas y veinticuatro obras teatrales, varias biografías, ensayos y libros de viajes, así como alrededor de cien cuentos.

The Moon and Sixpence<.I>, published in 1919, was one of the novels that galvanized W. Somerset Maugham's reputation as a literary master. It follows the life of one Charles Strickland, a bourgeois city gent whose dull exterior conceals the soul of a genius. Compulsive and impassioned, he abandons his home, wife, and children to devote himself slavishly to painting. In a tiny studio in Paris, he fills canvas after canvas, refusing to sell or even exhibit his work. Beset by poverty, sickness, and his own intransigent, unscrupulous nature, he drifts to Tahiti, where, even after being blinded by leprosy, he produces some of his most extraordinary works of art. Inspired by the life of Paul Gauguin, The Moon and Sixpence is an unforgettable study of a man possessed by the need to create&#151;regardless of the cost to himself and to others.

Best known for his novels and plays, Somerset Maugham also produced delightfully engaging and absorbing non-fiction, of which The Gentleman in the Parlour is a prime example. First published in 1935 it describes a journey the author took from Rangoon to Haipong. Whether by river to Mandalay, on horse through the mountains and forests of the Shan States to Bangkok, or onwards by sea, Maugham’s muse is in the spirit of Hazlitt, who wrote: “It is great to shake off the trammels of the world and public opinion...and to be known by no other title than The Gentleman in the Parlour .

A young woman, carried away by passion, sees a chance to escape a dull life and to experience true love. But she discovers that little in her marriage to the dutiful and sensible Edward meets her expectations. And as passion dies, she finds herself trapped in a loveless, oppressive marriage.

Now a major motion picture from USA Films starring Kristin Scott Thomas and Sean Penn, and director Philip Haas (director of Angels and Insects). In Up at the Villa, W. Somerset Maugham portrays a wealthy young English woman who finds herself confronted rather brutally by the repercussions of whimsy. On the day her older and prosperous friend asks her to marry him, Mary Leonard demurs and decides to postpone her reply a few days. But driving into the hills above Florence alone that evening, Mary offers a ride to a handsome stranger. And suddenly, her life is utterly, irrevocably altered. For this stranger is a refugee of war, and he harbors more than one form of passion. Before morning, Mary will witness bloodshed, she will be forced to seek advice and assistance from an unsavory man, and she will have to face the truth about her own yearnings. Erotic, haunting, and maddeningly suspenseful, Up at the Villa is a masterful tale of temptation and the capricious nature of fate.

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.

Set in England and Hong Kong in the 1920s, The Painted Veil is the story of the beautiful but love-starved Kitty Fane. When her husband discovers her adulterous affair, he forces her to accompany him to the heart of a cholera epidemic. Stripped of the British society of her youth and the small but effective society she fought so hard to attain in Hong Kong, she is compelled by her awakening conscience to reassess her life and learn how to love.
The Painted Veil is a beautifully written affirmation of the human capacity to grow, to change, and to forgive.

By 1938, Maugham had become a legend as a playwright, novelist and magician of the short story. He then wrote The Summing Up to give some account of how he learned his craft and why he became such an acute observer of human beings.