Histórias dos Mares do Sul (Coleção Catavento #32) - The Trembling of a Leaf

W. Somerset Maugham, William Somerset Maugham

Globo, (RS)

1962

218 páginas

7h 16m

ISBN-10: 8525016667

Português Brasileiro

Stories of Hawaii and the South Seas including "Red," the author's most successful short story and "Rain," his most notorious one. After working in British Intelligence during World War I, William Somerset Maugham set off to regain his health by traveling to Asia, Mexico, and the Pacific Islands. During this trip he gather materials and wrote the stories that appeared in 1921 in The Trembling of a Leaf. The six short stories and two "sketches" include the famous story "Rain"-adapted for both theater and film as Sadie Thompson-a story about the ironic consequences of obsession. Its less known companions, however, have their own merits. "Macintosh" is a taut psychological study of two officials on a remote tropic island. "The Fall of Edward Barnard" is a brief bildungsroman about what is important in life-a pre-cursor of Maugham's well known novel, The Razor's Edge. Of course love is always a subject of the tropics and Maugham's deft, ironic handling of the theme in "Red" and "Honolulu" is masterful. But it is "The Pool" that tells a poignant and tragic tale about the pitfalls for love across cultures. "I have never pretended to be anything but a story teller," Maugham once wrote. These short stories are some of his best, and among the best ever written about the exotic South Seas. . .

[About the Author]: Maugham (1874-1965), noted English novelist, playwright and author of masterly short stories, spent several months in the Pacific in 1916 and 1917 during an interlude in his service in British intelligence during World War I. He had wanted to go to the South Seas ever since, as a youth, he had read the tales of Herman Melville, Pierre Loti, and Robert Louis Stevenson.

Resenhas (7)

3 (Bom)

Uma leitura que, particularmente, fluiu bem no começo por conta da curiosidade sobre as histórias, mas começou a se tornar lenta.
Histórias dos Mares do Sul é um livro com 7 contos diferentes entre si, mas que em todos traz a realidade de uma forma mais natural para a época que foi escrito.
Algo que parece estar presente no livro inteiro é a sensação de que os indígenas da terra parecem ser inferiores ou interesseiros nos homens brancos que chegam, isso já partiria do contexto da época, claro.