The Razor’s Edge

Intimate acquaintances but less than friends, they meet and part in post-war London and Paris.

Elliott, the arch-snob but also the kindest of men; Isabel, considered to be entertaining, gracious and tactful; Gray, the quintessence of the Regular Guy; Suzanne, shrewd, roving and friendly; Sophie, lost, wanton, with a vicious attractiveness about her; and finally Larry, so hard and so trustful, lost in the world’s confusion… Their story, one of Somerset Maugham’s best, encompasses the pain, passion and poignancy of life itself.

The Razor’s Edge prompted Cyril Connolly to comment that Somerset Maugham is a great writer determined to tell the truth in a form which releases all the possibilities of his art’.