Stories

William Somerset Maugham is an English writer, one of the most successful prose writers of the 1930s, and an agent of British intelligence.

Maugham was born into the family of a diplomat, became an orphan early, and was raised in the household of his uncle—a priest—and in the “King’s School” boys’ boarding school; he studied medicine and received a doctor’s diploma. After the success of his first book, the novel “Liza of Lambeth” (1897), he decided to leave medicine and become a writer. This period of his life is indirectly reflected in his novels “The Burden of Human Passions” (1915) and “Pies and Ale, or the Skeleton in the Cupboard” (1930). Several novels written afterward didn’t bring financial results, and Maugham turned to playwriting. After the loud success of the comedy “Lady Frederick” (1907), Maugham became a successful author. From then on he traveled often and extensively around the world; in particular, in 1916–1917 he carried out a task for British intelligence, visited Russia, and wrote about it in his short story collection “Ashenden, or the British Agent” (1928). In the same year, he bought a villa on the French Côte d’Azur and lived there permanently, except for the period from October 1940 to mid-1946. The urn with Maugham’s ashes, according to his will, was buried by the wall of the library of the “King’s School,” created with his money and bearing his name.

Demanding mastery of form— a solidly constructed plot, a strict selection of material, the capacity of detail, dialogue natural as breathing, virtuoso command of the semantic and sonic riches of his native language, a free conversational tone and at the same time restraint, an elusive, subtly skeptical narrative intonation, a clear, economical, simple style—makes Maugham a classic of the 20th-century short story. The variety of characters, types, situations, conflicts, the connection of pathology and normality, good and evil, the terrible and the funny, everyday life and exoticism turn his novelistic heritage (prepared by him in 1953; the complete collection of short stories includes 91 works) into a kind of “human tragicomedy.” However, this canon is softened by endless tolerance, wise irony, and a principled refusal to play the role of judge over one’s neighbor. In Maugham, life seems to tell on itself, to judge itself, and to pronounce a moral verdict; the author is nothing more than an observer and chronicler of what is depicted. ©

Contents:
01. Breakfast (read by Alexey Shulin)
02. Louise (read by Alexander Kuritsyn)
03. Maugham (read by Stanislav Fedosov)
04. The Poet (read by Alexander Kuritsyn)
05. A Dream (read by Dmitry Shilyaev)
06. In Search of Material (read by Stanislav Fedosov)
07. Friends Are Known in Adversity (read by Ivan Litvinov)
08. The Grasshopper and the Ant (read by Egor Serov)