Unappreciated and criticised while alive, Strickland becomes one of the most admired artist post-mortem. Strickland’s passion for the arts, his total indifference towards earthly pleasures and comfort, and his search for ways to satisfy his tormented soul lead him to French Polynesia to build a new life and to explore his potential. He lives a dull and boring life and it is quite a shock for society when he suddenly abandons his job, his secure life and his wife to travel to Paris and paint. He appears deprived from any sort of artistry or character for that matter. When we are first introduced to him, Strickland is a normal English man (around 40), with a normal job (a stockbroker) and a normal family (a wife and two children). Told through the point-of-view of a nameless first-person narrator, a writer, The Moon and Sixpence tells the story of Charles Strickland. The Moon and Sixpence is loosely based on the life of the French Post-Impressionist artist Paul Gauguin. Somerset Maugham has long been present in my reader and one of my best friends has been annoyingly insisting for me to read it so it was about time I succumbed to yet another of the authors you must read before you die, or whatever. Later, when I grew up and knew better, I recognised the pattern of good (i.e safe) authors allowed during the communist rule but nevertheless this doesn’t diminish the value of my grandmother’s library and the awe with which I observe it every time I visit.Īfter a rather long obsession with all sorts of contemporary Bulgarian authors, I decided on a shift back to something more classical and established. I remember as a child being impressed by the fact that she was such a devoted reader and that she had all the volumes of certain authors. Somerset Maugham are the huge and dusty volumes in my grandmother’s huge and dusty library.
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