From the dust jacket: The highest praise that a critic of modern literature can bestow upon a new novel is to attribute to it some of the qualities which have made Of Human Bondage the greatest autobiographical novel of the twentieth century and one of the few indisputable classic of our time. Today every word that comes from Somerset Maugham’s gifted pen is eagerly read by thousands on both side of the Atlantic. As the author of Cakes and Ale, East and West, The Moon and Sixpence and many other best sellers, Mr. Maugham is universally recognized as a master of English letters, but the critics and the reading public are agreed that Of Human Bondage remains his masterpiece.
The story is that of the first thirty years of Philip Carey’s life. Through Philip’s intelligent and remarkably clear eyes one sees an English school, a German University, a colony of artistic failures in Paris, a dreary business house in London, a large hospital and a village on the British coast. All these places, and many more, come as close to the reader as they did to Philip. It is an intensely personal story. One suffers with the sensitive boy the bitter realization of his physical handicap, enjoys his friendship and shares his problems. Like Philip, the personality through which the very real experience of the book is passed, one realizes that if one has lived thoroughly, that life has a meaning and a pattern as rich, though as unsymmetrical, as those formed by the colors in an oriental rug.
