The Razor's Edge

By W. Somerset Maugham

Although Larry Darrell has returned home safely from active duty as a pilot in the Great War, his experiences have left him raw and traumatized. Seeing the world from a much different perspective than he had before the War, Larry sets out on a journey to find peace and a deeper meaning in his life, rejecting the conventionality that his friends and loved ones seem to embrace.

The Razor’s Edge quickly became a bestseller upon its publication in 1944, and was one of the first books to foreshadow the popularization of Eastern philosophy and spirituality in Western culture.

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• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins
• Release date: Jan 5, 2016
• ISBN: 9781443451130

W. Somerset Maugham

W. Somerset Maugham (1874-1965) was an English novelist, playwright, and short story writer. Born in Paris, he was orphaned as a boy and sent to live with an emotionally distant uncle. He struggled to fit in as a student at The King’s School in Canterbury and demanded his uncle send him to Heidelberg University, where he studied philosophy and literature. In Germany, he had his first affair with an older man and embarked on a career as a professional writer. After completing his degree, Maugham moved to London to begin medical school. There, he published Liza of Lambeth (1897), his debut novel. Emboldened by its popular and critical success, he dropped his pursuit of medicine to devote himself entirely to literature. Over his 65-year career, he experimented in form and genre with such works as Lady Frederick (1907), a play, The Magician (1908), an occult novel, and Of Human Bondage (1915). The latter, an autobiographical novel, earned Maugham a reputation as one of the twentieth century’s leading authors, and continues to be recognized as his masterpiece. Although married to Syrie Wellcome, Maugham considered himself both bisexual and homosexual at different points in his life. During and after the First World War, he worked for the British Secret Intelligence Service as a spy in Switzerland and Russia, writing of his experiences in Ashenden: Or the British Agent (1927), a novel that would inspire Ian Fleming’s James Bond series. At one point the highest-paid author in the world, Maugham led a remarkably eventful life without sacrificing his literary talent.