The Painted Veil is a 1925 novel by British author W. Somerset Maugham. The title is a reference to Percy Bysshe Shelley’s 1824 sonnet, which begins ‘Lift not the painted veil which those who live / Call Life’.
Maugham uses a third-person-limited point of view in this story, where Kitty Garstin is the focal character. Through Kitty one can witness a myriad of emotions and sentiments. She, being an extrovert personality likes to mingle with people but circumstances in her life are such that she is forced to marry Walter Fane who is totally her opposite. Her husband is a bacteriologist who works in Hong Kong and she indulges in an affair with Charles Townsend. However, with the twist of events she is forced to pass through various phases that make her evolve as a person and find her own dimensions of personality.
About the author
William Somerset Maugham was an English writer, known for his plays, novels and short stories. His first novel, Liza of Lambeth (1897), a study of life in the slums, attracted attention, but it was as a playwright that he first achieved national celebrity.
Maugham’s novels after Liza of Lambeth include Of Human Bondage (1915), The Moon and Sixpence (1919), The Painted Veil (1925), Cakes and Ale (1930) and The Razor’s Edge (1944). His short stories were published in collections such as The Casuarina Tree (1926) and The Mixture as Before (1940).
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