"There was in the soul of that boy some confused striving, whether of half-thought-out ideas or of dimly felt emotions, I could not tell." Larry Darrell is a young American in search of the absolute. The progress of this spiritual odyssey involves him with some of Maugham's most brilliant characters - his fiancée Isabel, whose choice between love and wealth have lifelong repercussions, and Elliot Templeton, her uncle, a classic expatriate American snob. The most ambitious of Maugham's novels, this is also one in which Maugham himself plays a considerable part as he wanders in and out of the story. To observe his characters struggling with their fates. "An immensely craftsman-like, amusing and imaginatively stimulating piece of fiction...a fascinating book."-Times Literary Supplement "Here at last is a great writer, on the threshold of old age, determined to tell the truth in a form which releases all the possibilities of his art." -Cyril Connolly