Customer Reviews

The Trembling of a Leaf: Little Stories of the South Sea Islands

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His short stories whetted my appetite for good reading as I was learning the subtle nuances of English language as an adolescent in 1970s. Like healthy food healthy books also need some effort at resisting junk while cultivation of a taste is ongoing in one's reading adolescence. English was only a second language for me after Oriya those days. One of my favorites is "Bookbag", where a British Colonial Civil Servant survives his outpost reading books and late delivery periodicals in chronological order.(Like watching a video tape of a soap opera in right order) I sought out all his books as well as books about him. One of them called "Somerset and all the Maughams" is written by his nephew Robin Maugham. In that he also mentions about a maternal uncle of Somerset Maugham, a black sheep named Charles Snell, who died an untimely death in Cuttack,a town in eastern India where I happened to spend a good part of my youth. I found his tomb stone in a cemetary known to locals as white mans' burial ground. Each epitaph in that cemetary may as well be spun into a Maugham story. Hope his books start to sell at Airports or train station bookstalls again. I think he is one of the most under-rated literary prodigies of last century. Do any English Professors teach his books in a undergraduate class ? Unfortunately the period and locales described by Maugham are rapidly being dismembered by the tramplings of human civilization. Hope reprints of his short stories like this; will keep them alive in the imagination of generations to come, at the least.

As someone who lived in the South Pacific (Samoa) and visited many countries there over a period of many years, I can tell you that W.S.M.'s South Pacific tales rank among the greatest. No one describes the people and cultures of the South Pacific better. No one describes the interaction of Westerners and the island people better. These are great stories, and I frequently have found myself wondering why they aren't held up in college and university writing classes as being among the peak of storytelling. Read them. They are simply great.