L’Envoûté

First published in English in 1919 under the title The Moon and Sixpence, L’Envoûté is one of Somerset Maugham’s most celebrated novels: the writer freely transposes the life of Paul Gauguin into the character of Charles Strickland, a London stockbroker who one day abruptly abandons his wife, children, career and England itself. His decision answers an inner necessity that has become irrepressible: Strickland wants to paint.

What follows is the trajectory of a man who sacrifices everything to a vocation whose violence he does not even attempt to justify; from London to Marseille, and then on to the South Seas, Strickland moves forward as though driven by some obscure and often brutal, ungrateful force, with the shadow of Gauguin present throughout.

A good copy with all margins; spine restored.