The translator would like to thank Melissa P., for her patient answers to queries about stylistic matters; Lauren Wein, for her help with sartorial terms; and Martha Tennent, for her steadfast support, moral and otherwise.
Charles Strickland is a staid banker, a man of wealth and privilege. He is also a man possessed of an unquenchable desire to create art. As Strickland pursues his artistic vision, he leaves London for Paris and Tahiti, and in his quest makes sacrifices that leaves the lives of those closest to him in tatters. Through Maugham's sympathetic eye Strickland's tortured and cruel soul becomes a symbol of the blessing and the curse of transcendent artistic genius, and the cost in humans lives it sometimes pgsk.com on the life of Paul Gauguin, The Moon and Sixpence is W. Somerset Maugham's ode to the powerful forces behind creative genius.
In the United States today we have good reasons to be afraid. Our Bill of Rights is no more. It has been rendered pointless by heavy surveillance of average citizens, political persecution of dissenters, and the potential of indefinite detention now codified into law.