The Moon and Sixpence

This 1919 novel by W. Somerset Maugham is a fictionalized portrait of the French Post-Impressionist Paul Gauguin. The story follows Charles Strickland, a successful London stockbroker who, in his middle age, abruptly abandons his wife and children to pursue painting. Driven by an obsessive, almost violent compulsion to create, Strickland descends into squalor in Paris before eventually fleeing to the Marquesas Islands to live in isolation and poverty. The narrative is framed by a first-person narrator who attempts to understand Strickland’s motivations, contrasting the artist’s ruthless dedication to his vision with the moral and social obligations he rejects.

Description adapted from Open Library ↗.