On his way home from a remote Pacific island, Dr Saunders travels with two strangers: the treacherous Captain Nichols and Fred, a handsome Australian with a shadowy past.
Driven to shelter from a storm on the island of Kanda, the trio meet good-natured Erik Christessen and his fiancée, the cool and beautiful Louise. This tense tale of love, jealousy, murder and suicide evolved from a passage in Maugham’s earlier novel, The Moon and Sixpence.
Reviewed by David Gilmour in Slightly Foxed Issue 65.
Asking the Right Questions
Aspiring young writers of fiction wish to be stylish. For many of them style is more essential than content, perhaps more important than sincerity. They want their prose to be inimitable, like...
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