The Gentleman In The Parlour - Softcover

Maugham, W. Somerset

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0099286777 ISBN 13: 9780099286776

Publisher: Vintage Classics, 2001

Synopsis

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY PAUL THEROUXSomerset 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 Gentleman in the Parlour is an account of the author's trip through what was then Burma and Siam, ending in Haiphong, Vietnam. Whether by river to Mandalay, on horse through the mountains and forests of the Shan States to Bangkok, or onwards by sea, Maugham's vivid descriptions bring a lost world to life.

About this title

Review:

"There enough raw material to sate his imagination and the journey itself takes on the contours of a story worth recording. Among the coolly-observed descriptions of ruined pagodas there's the added treat of Maugham's catty thoughts on his craft" (Sunday Herald (Glasgow))

"Maugham's finest travel book...As the urbane novelist wends his way through tropic climes, he reads Proust under the mosquito netting, listens to stories of passion and madness from British colonials gone to seed, and bears up under the merciless sun, sipping at a gin and bitters and laying out a hand of solitaire" (Washington Post)

"An elegant writer's notebook, imaginative, crammed with impressions and ideas received simply and directly, without the filtering screens of literariness or Englishness... he writes with majestic plainness" (The Times)

"A delightful book - It contains vivid travel impressions, some autobiographical confidences, and the plots for a dozen novels" (Spectator)

Book Description:

A fantastic portrait of 1920s Burma and Thailand by the neglected 20th century master

About this edition

• Publisher: Vintage Classics
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0099286777
• ISBN 13: 9780099286776
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 240