W Somerset - Böcker

Reading the stories of Somerset Maugham is rather like curling up and up listening to the delicious, risqué tales of an old, dear and rather wicked friend. You turn the pages and enter a magical world of fabulous characters, are transported to the...

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Söderhavet som litterärt landskap av Redaktör Ulf Johansson Dahre: Tänk att vara född som en så kallad vilde på en av Söderhavsöarna, att kunna njuta av den rena och obefläckade mänskliga existensen, J.W. GOETHE, 1828 Söderhavet, Romantiskt, mytis...

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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 brillant characters - his fiancee Isabel, whose choice between love and wealth have lifelong repercussions...

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This classic collection of stories moves from England, France and Spain to the silver sands of the South Pacific. It includes the famous story 'Rain', the tragedy of a narrow-minded and overzealous missionary and a prostitute, and 'The Three Fat W...

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The stories in this collection move from Malaya to America and England, and include some of Maugham's most famous tales; 'Flotsam and Jetsam', the story of an old woman trapped for years in a loveless marriage in the remote rubber plantations; 'Th...

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Mary Panton walls up her desires in a beautiful villa high up in the hills above Florence, as she calmly contemplates her disastrous marriage. But a single act of compassion begins a nightmare of violence that shatters her serenity. She turns for ...

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"The Moon and Sixpence, 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...

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WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY NICHOLAS SHAKESPEARE Cakes and Ale is both a wickedly satirical novel about contemporary literary poseurs and a skilfully crafted study of freedom. As he traces the fortunes of Edward Driffield and his extraordinary wife Ro...

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Kitty Fane is the beautiful but shallow wife of Walter, a bacteriologist stationed in Hong Kong. Unsatisfied by her marriage, she starts an affair with charming, attractive and exciting Charles Townsend. But when Walter discovers her deception, he...

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When war broke out in 1914, Somerset Maugham was dispatched by the British Secret Service to Switzerland under the guise of completing a play. Multilingual, knowledgeable about many European countries and a celebrated writer, Maugham had the perfe...

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Looking out upon the backstreets, the suburbs and the high society haunts of Edwardian London, the delightfully witty and independent spinster Miss Ley surveys a tangled web of lives; she sympathetically observes the struggle under the pressures o...

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Charles Strickland, a conventional stockbroker, abandons his wife and children for Paris and Tahiti, to live his life as a painter. Whilst his betrayal of family, duty and honour gives him the freedom to achieve greatness, his decision leads to an...

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Down among the drab slums of Lambeth, eighteen-year-old Liza is the darling of Vere Street. Vibrant and bewitching, she is adored by the steady, loyal Tom. But then Liza meets Jim Blakeston, charming and worldy, new to the area, and married. Soon ...

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Far Eastern Tales is a collection of short stories born of Maugham's experiences in Malaya, Singapore and other outposts of the former British Empire. Whether portraying a ship-borne flight from a lover's curse, murder in the jungle, or a marriage...

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A masterpiece of modern literature that mirrors Maugham's own career. Of Human Bondage is the first and most autobiographical of Maugham's novels. It is the story of Philip Carey, an orphan eager for life, love and adventure. After a few months st...

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WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY PAUL THEROUX Somerset Maugham's success as a writer enabled him to indulge his adventurous love of travel, and he recorded the sights and sounds of his wide-ranging journeys with an urbane, wry style all his own. The Gentle...

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Maugham's studies of the lives and masterpieces of ten great novelists are outstanding examples of literary criticism at its finest. Afforded here are some of the formulae of greatness in the genre, as well as the flaws and heresies which enfeeble...

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"The Vagrant Mood" is a brilliantly varied and colourful collection of essays. From Kant to Raymond Chandler; from the legend of Zurbaran to the art of the detective story; and, from Burke to Augustus Hare, Somerset Maugham brings his in...

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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 doubt one of his most important works. Part autobiographical, part confessional, packed with observations, confidences...

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Julia Lambert is in her prime, the greatest actress in England. On stage she is a true professional, in full possession of her emotions. Off stage, however, she is bored with her husband, less disciplined about her behaviour. She is at first amuse...

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Crippled sixteen-year-old Catalina is the one person unable to join in the festivities of the Feast of the Assumption. But then she has a vision of the Virgin, and is miraculously cured. In the dark days of the Spanish Inquisition, such a claim to...

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A coming-of-age novel that moves from genteel British society to the grim underworld of Paris before the war. At the age of twenty-three, Charlie Mason is endowed with good looks, good manners and a cheerful disposition. Following three years at C...

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Maugham found a parallel to the turmoil of our own century in the duplicity, intrigue and sensuality of the Italian Renaissance. Then and Now enters the world of Machiavelli, and covers three important months in the career of that crafty politicia...

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On his way home from a remote Pacific island, Dr Saunders travels with two strangers: the treacherous Captain Nichols, and Fred, a handsome Australian with a shadowy past. Driven to shelter from a storm on the island of Kanda, the trio meet good-n...

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Autobiographical without being an autobiography, confessional without disclosing his private self, The Summing Up, written when Maugham was sixty-four, is an inimitable expression of a personal credo. It is not only a classic avowal of a professio...

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Bertha Ley comes of age, inherits her father's money and promptly marries a handsome, calm and unimaginative man. Bertha is wildly in love with Edward and believes she can be happy playing the role of a dutiful wife in their country home. But, int...

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Eclectic and illuminating, these essays are the last that Maugham published. Ranging from an appreciation of Goethe's novels, to an encounter with an Indian holy man, with a considered analysis of the form at which Maugham himself excelled - the s...

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Set in the bohemian café society of Paris at the turn of the nineteenth century, Maugham's exploration of hypnotism and the occult was inspired by the sinister black magician Aleister Crowley. At the start of this compulsive gothic horror story, A...

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