Dimensions
129 x 198 x 19mm
Maugham's characters - Americans in Europe between the wars - return as Australians in the late 1970s: the charismatic young Larry; his high school sweetheart turned high society hostess, Isabel; her husband, the real estate tycoon Gray Maturin; Isabel's uncle, the incorrigible, iniquitous Elliot Templeton; and the narrator, a gay playwright named after Maugham. In this re-imagined fictional universe, Larry's early life-changing experience occurs not as an under-age enlistee in the First World War but during a teenage backpacking trip to India, where he returns several times, to live in a fashionable ashram, a Buddhist monastery, and with an enigmatic saint.
The choices Larry makes and their ramifications for those around him - especially Isabel, who continues to miss his presence in her life - are played out against the backdrop of the 1980s and 90s.
