Very Short Stories =Nouvelles Brèves

by W. Somerset Maugham

William Somerset Maugham, romancier, dramaturge, conteur, a crit plus de cent vingt nouvelles. Les neuf retenues ici, grce la varit des thmes et des registres, la tonalit des rcits, rvlent toute la palette de l'auteur et permettent d'apprcier la remarquable concision de son style.

Genres: Short Stories, Classics

185 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2006

About the author

William Somerset Maugham was born in Paris in 1874. He spoke French even before he spoke a word of English, a fact to which some critics attribute the purity of his style.

His parents died early and, after an unhappy boyhood, which he recorded poignantly in Of Human Bondage, Maugham became a qualified physician. But writing was his true vocation. For ten years before his first success, he almost literally starved while pouring out novels and plays.

Maugham wrote at a time when experimental modernist literature such as that of William Faulkner, Thomas Mann, James Joyce and Virginia Woolf was gaining increasing popularity and winning critical acclaim. In this context, his plain prose style was criticized as 'such a tissue of clichés' that one's wonder is finally aroused at the writer's ability to assemble so many and at his unfailing inability to put anything in an individual way.

During World War I, Maugham worked for the British Secret Service . He travelled all over the world, and made many visits to America. After World War II, Maugham made his home in south of France and continued to move between England and Nice till his death in 1965.

At the time of Maugham's birth, French law was such that all foreign boys born in France became liable for conscription. Thus, Maugham was born within the Embassy, legally recognized as UK territory.

Reviews

[Elisa · Rating 3 out of 5]

Lecture sympathique, divertissante mais sans plus. Ce ne sera pas une lecture marquante hormis quelques unes de ces nouvelles. De plus que l’auteur utilise tout au long de ces neuf nouvelles le même schéma narratif ce qui vers la fin lasse.
Néanmoins, je pense que c’est un bon livre pour commencer à lire en anglais et les descriptions des personnages sont très bien faites dans ce recueil !

[Laure · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved those very short stories, and want to read some more now ! "The Verger" was my favourite n this book. Somerset Maugham has this incredible style where all the words count. There is not a line that could be erased... He has an amazing story-telling skill...I really enjoyed this book.

[Valens]

(Je ne note aucun ouvrage, je veux que mes petits écrits ne soient ici que des impressions de lecture, faibles notes à la fermeture d'un volume.)

Un art de la concision et du portrait. Simplicité efficace, un regard vif sur les singularités et l'ordinaire humains.