The Gentleman in the Parlour

This book includes an introduction by Paul Theroux. Somerset Maugham's success as a writer enabled him to indulge his adventurous love of travel, and he recorded the sights and sounds of his wide-ranging journeys with an urbane, wry style all his own. "The Gentleman in the Parlour" is an account of the author's trip through what was then Burma and Siam, ending in Haiphong, Vietnam. Whether by river to Mandalay, on horse through the mountains and forests of the Shan States to Bangkok, or onwards by sea, Maugham's vivid descriptions bring a lost world to life.

ISBN 0099286777   Pages 240 ISBN13 9780099286776 (What's this?)   Weight (grammes) 169 Publisher Vintage   Published in London Imprint Vintage   Series title Vintage classics Format Paperback   Height (mm) 198 Publication date 06 Sep 2001   Width (mm) 129 Writer of introduction Paul Theroux   Spine width (mm) 14 DEWEY 915.90451   Academic level General DEWEY edition DC21

There enough raw material to sate his imagination and the journey itself takes on the contours of a story worth recording. Among the coolly-observed descriptions of ruined pagodas there's the added treat of Maugham's catty thoughts on his craft Sunday Herald (Glasgow) Maugham's finest travel book...As the urbane novelist wends his way through tropic climes, he reads Proust under the mosquito netting, listens to stories of passion and madness from British colonials gone to seed, and bears up under the merciless sun, sipping at a gin and bitters and laying out a hand of solitaire Washington Post An elegant writer's notebook, imaginative, crammed with impressions and ideas received simply and directly, without the filtering screens of literariness or Englishness... he writes with majestic plainness The Times A delightful book - It contains vivid travel impressions, some autobiographical confidences, and the plots for a dozen novels Spectator

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