The Moon and Sixpence is a literary novel about Charles Strickland, a respectable London stockbroker who abruptly abandons his family and social position in pursuit of painting, following an uncompromising artistic impulse that takes him from Europe toward the South Pacific. W. Somerset Maugham shapes the story through the voice of an observing narrator, turning Strickland’s life into a sharp study of art, obsession, selfishness, freedom, and the moral cost of rejecting ordinary human obligations. The novel will interest readers of classic English literature, psychological fiction, artist novels, and early twentieth-century fiction concerned with the conflict between social life and creative drive, while keeping open the unsettling question of how much a person may sacrifice, or force others to sacrifice, in the name of art.
Author: W. Somerset Maugham
Publisher: Guild Publishing, London
Publication year: 1978
Number of pages: 250
Original language: English
Original title: The Moon and Sixpence