The Painted Veil

William Somerset Maugham, better known as W. Somerset Maugham, was born on January 25, 1874, in Paris, France. He was an English novelist, playwright, and short-story writer whose work is characterized by a clear unadorned style, cosmopolitan settings, and a shrewd understanding of human nature. He was one of the most reputed and well-known writers of his era and one of the highest-paid authors of his time.


The Painted Veil is a 1925 famous novel by British author W. Somerset Maugham.  Maugham uses a third-person-limited point of view in this story, where Kitty Garstin is the focal character. Through Kitty one can witness a myriad of emotions and sentiments. She, being an extrovert personality likes to mingle with people but circumstances in her life are such that she is forced to marry Walter Fane who is totally her opposite. Her husband is a bacteriologist who works in Hong Kong and she indulges in an affair with Charles Townsend. However, with the twist of events she is forced to pass through various phases that make her evolve as a person and find her own dimensions of personality.