On A Chinese Screen

Description

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. A series of acute and finely crafted sketches of Westerners who are culturally out of their depth in the immensity of the Chinese civilisation. 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. (Preceeding text courtesy www.randomhouse.co.uk) Paperback

Promotion info

Stunningly rejacketed as part of a major reinvention of this neglected 20th century master

Reviews

Evoke the nostalgic China of "old China hands," replete with rickshaws, coolies and singsing girls...satisfying accounts of the follies and foibles of the British diplomats and expatriates who stubbornly ignore the native culture and labor to create little enclaves of Chelsea and Soho in Asia Los Angeles Times Masterly...carefully wrought prose sketches...The magical, mysterious East is richly portrayed Newsday A fascinating volume - vivid, thoughtful, full of colour New York Times

Author description

William Somerset Maugham 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 the idea of practising medicine, but the success of his first novel, Liza of Lambeth, published in 1897, won him over to literature. 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. At the same time his fame as a successful playwright and writer was being consolidated with acclaimed productions of various plays and the publication of several short story collections. His other works include travel books, essays, criticism and the autobiographical The Summing Up and A Writer's Notebook. In 1927 Somerset Maugham settled in the South of France and lived there until his death in 1965