Of Human Bondage: A Classic Novel of Obsession, Youth, and Self-Discovery - Paperback

by W. Somerset Maugham (Author)

Of Human Bondage is W. Somerset Maugham's great novel of youth, obsession, disillusionment, and the painful education of desire. Philip Carey, orphaned as a child and burdened by a physical deformity, passes through school, religion, art, medicine, love, humiliation, and self-deception in search of a life that can be honestly lived. His attachment to the indifferent Mildred becomes one of the most famous destructive relationships in twentieth-century fiction, exposing the raw dependency, pride, and vulnerability that shape his passage into adulthood.

Broad in scope yet intimate in psychological detail, Maugham's novel stands among the major English literary classics of the early twentieth century. It is a coming-of-age novel, a study of romantic obsession, and a portrait of a young man learning to see both himself and the world without illusion. For readers of classic literature, British fiction, psychological fiction, and literary realism, Of Human Bondage remains one of Maugham's central achievements: unsparing, humane, and quietly devastating.