James Parsons returns from the South African War to his parents’ quiet English village honoured for gallantry, and finds he can no longer live by its narrow pieties. Colonel Parsons and his wife want their son as he was; his patient fiancée wants the wedding promised years before. Remembering the open veld, James feels his decency turning into a trap.
An early Maugham novel of 1901 that already shows his cool eye for respectable cruelty and patriotic cant. Download the free EPUB.