Across colonial outposts, drawing rooms and remote plantations, Maugham watches human weakness come quietly to light..The stories in this second volume of W. Somerset Maugham’s collected short fiction move from Malaya to America, England, Borneo, China, Russia and Central America. They include some of Maugham’s most famous tales: ‘Flotsam and Jetsam’, the story of an old woman trapped for years in a loveless marriage in the remote rubber plantations; ‘The Man with the Scar’; and notably the opening story, ‘The Vessel of Wrath’, in which unexpected love grows between a devout missionary nurse and a drunken reprobate. These classic short stories are linked by Maugham’s wry perception of human foibles and his gift for revealing the drama beneath social surfaces. Across plantations, ships, drawing rooms and colonial outposts, he writes about desire, loneliness, self-deception, compromise and the revelations that disturb even the most carefully arranged lives. A classic short story collection for readers of literary fiction, colonial fiction and twentieth-century classics, this volume shows Maugham’s elegant storytelling at its most observant.