The Painted Veil: Classic Illustrated Book by W. Somerset Maugham
First serialized in 1924 and published as a complete novel in 1925, "The Painted Veil" is the powerful novel of transgression and redemption by popular and prolific British author W. Somerset Maugham. "The Painted Veil" tells the story of the lovely and superficial Kitty Garstin and her unhappy marriage to Walter Fane, a quiet and honorable man. Kitty agrees to marry Walter not because she loves him, but because she fears being upstaged by her younger sister. Kitty travels to Tching-Yen with her new husband, where he is posted as a government scientist, and Kitty soon falls in love with her husband's colleague, the handsome and charming Charlie Townsend. Walter is not as clueless about her behavior as Kitty would like to believe, and eventually rejected by her selfish lover, he has her travel with him to mainland China to help during a dangerous cholera epidemic. The experience utterly transforms Kitty and she begins to take responsibility for her mistakes and understand her shortcomings. Beautiful and deeply affecting, "The Painted Veil" is a thought-provoking study of the ability of people to change, grow, and learn how to love deeply. This edition is printed on premium acid-free paper.
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Community Reviews
And did I mention that blatant racism thing? Yeahhhhh, it took over half of the book to reeeaaaallllly get into it, but once Kitty started working in the convent there were some very gross descriptions of Chinese people. It's one of those "classics" where the racism needs to be addressed and interrogated and ought to be replaced in a classroom with something either more racially sensitive or written by a person of color.
ALSO, I want Colonel Yu to be into Walter. I want both of them to have had a lingering moment of happiness, but hey. That's just me.
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