{"title":"W. Somerset Maugham","description":"\u003cp\u003eImmerse yourself in the worldly, ironic, and deeply humane fiction of \u003cstrong\u003eW. Somerset Maugham\u003c\/strong\u003e (1874–1965), one of the most widely read British authors of the twentieth century and a supreme storyteller whose work spans novels, short stories, and plays. Maugham wrote with a cool, clear-eyed intelligence about human passion, artistic obsession, colonial life, and the eternal search for meaning — drawing on his extraordinary travels across Asia, the Pacific, and beyond. His essential novels include \u003cem\u003eOf Human Bondage\u003c\/em\u003e, his semi-autobiographical masterpiece; \u003cem\u003eThe Razor's Edge\u003c\/em\u003e, a profound exploration of spiritual seeking; \u003cem\u003eThe Moon and Sixpence\u003c\/em\u003e, inspired by the life of Paul Gauguin; \u003cem\u003eCakes and Ale\u003c\/em\u003e; and \u003cem\u003eThe Painted Veil\u003c\/em\u003e. His short stories are among the finest in the English language.\u003c\/p\u003e","products":[{"product_id":"the-razors-edge","title":"The Razor's Edge","description":"\u003cp\u003e'I happen to think that we've set our ideal on the wrong objects; I happen to think that the greatest ideal man can set before himself is self-perfection.'Larry Darrell returns from the war changed in ways no one around him can quite understand. While his friends pursue careers, comfort, and social standing, he drifts instead through Europe and Asia, restlessly searching for something he cannot name yet cannot abandon.Set against the glittering worlds of Paris and Chicago, and the severity of India, The Razor’s Edge traces one man’s refusal to accept the life laid out for him. Maugham follows Larry’s journey through cafés and ashrams, friendships and estrangements, love offered and turned aside. Around him move characters equally vivid in their longings: a woman determined to secure her place in society, a mentor worn by experience, friends carried forward by ambition.This is not a novel of answers, but of unease—about success, happiness, and the cost of walking away from both. Calm, observant, and at times unsettling, the book lingers because it asks what a life is for, without pretending to decide.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Dusky's Shrine","offers":[{"title":"Paperback","offer_id":46036886454329,"sku":"9789349042681","price":359.0,"currency_code":"INR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0795\/3367\/0457\/files\/81IFlh-QEGL._SL1500_6ba37995-6709-45b6-8475-3f0ba6db2ed3.jpg?v=1782816990"},{"product_id":"the-razors-edge-2","title":"Razor's Edge","description":"\u003cp\u003eLarry Darrell is a young American in search of the absolute. The progress of his spiritual odyssey involves him with some of Maugham's most brilliant characters - his fiancée Isabel whose choice between love and wealth have lifelong repercussions, and Elliott Templeton, her uncle, a classic expatriate American snob. Maugham himself wanders in and out of the story, to observe his characters struggling with their fates.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Dusky's Shrine","offers":[{"title":"Paperback","offer_id":46036888191033,"sku":"9780099284864","price":629.0,"currency_code":"INR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0795\/3367\/0457\/files\/81bymhgYmQL._SL1500_b64f680b-214f-4276-b1fd-920354a546f0.jpg?v=1782817014"},{"product_id":"the-moon-and-sixpence","title":"Moon and Sixpence","description":"\u003cp\u003eCharles 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 obsession which carries severe implications. Inspired by the life of Paul Gauguin, The Moon and Sixpence is at once a satiric caricature of Edwardian conventions and a vivid portrayal of the mentality of a genius.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Dusky's Shrine","offers":[{"title":"Paperback","offer_id":46038062989369,"sku":"9780099284765","price":629.0,"currency_code":"INR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0795\/3367\/0457\/files\/71be1VGK7bL._SL1500.jpg?v=1782822229"},{"product_id":"of-human-bondage","title":"Of Human Bondage (Bantam Classics)","description":"\u003cp\u003eIt is very difficult for a writer of my generation, if he is honest, to pretend indifference to the work of Somerset Maugham,\" wrote Gore Vidal. \"He was always so entirely there.\" Originally published in 1915, Of Human Bondage is a potent expression of the power of sexual obsession and of modern man's yearning for freedom. This classic bildungsroman tells the story of Philip Carey, a sensitive boy born with a clubfoot who is orphaned and raised by a religious aunt and uncle. Philip yearns for adventure, and at eighteen leaves home, eventually pursuing a career as an artist in Paris. When he returns to London to study medicine, he meets the androgynous but alluring Mildred and begins a doomed love affair that will change the course of his life. There is no more powerful story of sexual infatuation, of human longing for connection and freedom. \"Here is a novel of the utmost importance,\" wrote Theodore Dreiser on publication. \"It is a beacon of light by which the wanderer may be guided. . . . One feels as though one were sitting before a splendid Shiraz of priceless texture and intricate weave, admiring, feeling, responding sensually to its colors and tones.\"With an Introduction by Jane Smiley.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Dusky's Shrine","offers":[{"title":"Paperback","offer_id":46039412867129,"sku":"9780553213928","price":449.0,"currency_code":"INR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0795\/3367\/0457\/files\/61-qgEkmQSL._SL1030_9d096cf7-ebf1-47a6-92da-54f09901c3bb.jpg?v=1782824356"},{"product_id":"the-complete-short-stories","title":"Complete Short Stories","description":"\u003cp\u003eThe complete short stories of the 20th century's greatest visionary'Kafka is important to us because his predicament is the predicament of modern man' W. H. AudenThis volume contains all of Kafka's shorter fiction, from fragments, parables and sketches to longer tales. Together they reveal the breadth of Kafka's literary vision and the extraordinary imaginative depth of his thought. Some are well known, others are mere jottings, observations of daily life, given artistic form through Kafka's unique perception of the world.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Dusky's Shrine","offers":[{"title":"Paperback","offer_id":46039415390265,"sku":"9780749399467","price":719.0,"currency_code":"INR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0795\/3367\/0457\/files\/81frYyHD9bL._SL1500_1759db01-f485-4ea7-bef5-80d292167dfa.jpg?v=1782824418"},{"product_id":"collected-short-stories","title":"Collected short stories","description":"\u003cp\u003eThese 30 short stories, comprising Somerset Maugham's first collection, are set in locations ranging from England, France and Spain to the silver sands of the South Pacific. They include \"Rain,\" \"The Three Fat Women of Antibes,\" \"The Voice of the Turtle,\" and \"Before the Party.\"For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Dusky's Shrine","offers":[{"title":"Paperback","offer_id":46039907139641,"sku":"9780140185898","price":1259.0,"currency_code":"INR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0795\/3367\/0457\/files\/810fKBlpIIL._SL1500_11a527e9-0aa8-4910-8296-c1c601a62e92.jpg?v=1782836459"},{"product_id":"of-human-bondage-2","title":"Of Human Bondage","description":"\u003cp\u003e'There’s always one who loves and one who lets himself be loved.'Philip Carey's clubfoot has taught him about pain, but nothing prepares him for the self-inflicted torment of obsessive love. In W Somerset Maugham's unflinching portrait of a young man's education in life, Philip abandons religious certainty for medical school, trades London for Paris and art, and stumbles through relationships that both wound and teach. His devastating fixation on Mildred, a waitress who mistreats and exploits him, becomes the 'bondage' he cannot break, even as he recognizes his own captivity.This semi-autobiographical novel refuses easy answers. Instead, Maugham traces how we forge our own chains through passion, pride, and the desperate human need for meaning. Philip's struggle toward self-knowledge and acceptance feels startlingly modern: a young man learning that freedom begins when we stop clinging to the wrong people and the future we thought we deserved.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Dusky's Shrine","offers":[{"title":"Paperback","offer_id":46039993811001,"sku":"9789347590856","price":495.0,"currency_code":"INR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0795\/3367\/0457\/files\/81LfM1Mf1CL._SL1500.jpg?v=1782837745"},{"product_id":"the-moon-and-sixpence-2","title":"The Moon and Sixpence","description":"\u003cp\u003e'Life isn’t long enough for love and art.'What happens when a man decides that nothing—family, money, reputation—matters more than his inner truth? The Moon and Sixpence begins with an inexplicable act: Charles Strickland, a conventional London stockbroker, abandons his wife and children to pursue art, offering neither justification nor remorse.Told through an observer struggling to understand him, the novel presents a man who is neither heroic nor likeable. As Strickland descends into poverty and alienates everyone who tries to help him, his painting grows more ferocious, as though driven by a force beyond reason.Loosely inspired by Paul Gauguin's life, W Somerset Maugham strips artistic obsession of all romance. What emerges is deeply unsettling: a man altered by vision to the point where ordinary human claims—duty, compassion, responsibility—no longer seem to bind him. Whether this is genius or monstrosity is left deliberately and uncomfortably to the reader.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Dusky's Shrine","offers":[{"title":"Paperback","offer_id":46039994695737,"sku":"9789347590641","price":266.0,"currency_code":"INR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0795\/3367\/0457\/files\/817vh-4n-tL._SL1500.jpg?v=1782837764"},{"product_id":"the-painted-veil","title":"The Painted Veil","description":"\u003cp\u003eThe Painted Veil is a 1925 novel by British author W. Somerset Maugham. The title is a reference to Percy Bysshe Shelley's 1824 sonnet, which begins \"Lift not the painted veil which those who live \/ Call Life\". Maugham uses a third-person-limited point of view in this story, where Kitty Garstin is the focal character. Through Kitty one can witness a myriad of emotions and sentiments. She, being an extrovert personality likes to mingle with people but circumstances in her life are such that she is forced to marry Walter Fane who is totally her opposite. Her husband is a bacteriologist who works in Hong Kong and she indulges in an affair with Charles Townsend. However, with the twist of events she is forced to pass through various phases that make her evolve as a person and find her own dimensions of personality.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Dusky's Shrine","offers":[{"title":"Paperback","offer_id":46040159092793,"sku":"9788119216567","price":180.0,"currency_code":"INR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0795\/3367\/0457\/files\/718bv2C8qQL._SL1500.jpg?v=1782839822"},{"product_id":"the-trembling-of-a-leaf","title":"The Trembling of a Leaf","description":"\u003cp\u003eThe Trembling of a Leaf: Little Stories of the South Sea Islands is a collection of short stories by W. Somerset Maugham. The works contained in this edition—The Pacific, Mackintosh, The Fall of Edward Barnard, Red, The Pool, Honolulu, Rain, and Envoi—were inspired by Maugham's journeys to the South Sea Islands of the Pacific. Through these stories, Maugham sought to differentiate between his view of life in the South Seas from the views of his 'Romantic' predecessors like Herman Melville, Pierre Loti, and Robert Louis Stevenson. Readers will appreciate Maugham's honest and vivid accounts of cultural and racial interactions, love in the tropics, and his unforgettable descriptions of exotic islands in these dramatically powerful tales.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Dusky's Shrine","offers":[{"title":"Paperback","offer_id":46040196087865,"sku":"9789362057266","price":315.0,"currency_code":"INR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0795\/3367\/0457\/files\/61RfU1iNxbL._SL1360.jpg?v=1782840618"},{"product_id":"of-human-bondage-3","title":"Of Human Bondage","description":"\u003cp\u003eOf Human Bondage is a 1915 novel by W. Somerset Maugham. The novel is generally agreed to be Maugham's masterpiece and to be strongly autobiographical in nature. \"Of Human Bondage\" is the semi-autobiographical tale of Philip Carey, who like Maugham, is orphaned and brought up by his uncle. \"Of Human Bondage\" is a \"bildungsroman\" that traces the travels of its main character to Germany, Paris and London while exploring the intellectual, emotional and psychological development of the protagonist and later his destructive relationship with the main female character, Mildred Rogers. Of Human Bondage is considered among 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Dusky's Shrine","offers":[{"title":"Paperback","offer_id":46040204214329,"sku":"9788119216529","price":539.0,"currency_code":"INR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0795\/3367\/0457\/files\/71oPVE0vomL._SL1500_f2e3f00e-f122-4ac9-9063-26ace711f192.jpg?v=1782840759"}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0795\/3367\/0457\/collections\/image_76e7b539-5e06-4684-950d-dafb99c4c858.png?v=1782610227","url":"https:\/\/duskysshrine.com\/collections\/w-somerset-maugham.oembed","provider":"Dusky's Shrine","version":"1.0","type":"link"}