Penguin Twentieth Century Classics: The Painted Veil

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'Siena made me, Maremma unmade me: this he knows who after betrothal espoused me with his ring.' Somerset Maugham's classic novel of a woman's spiritual awakening was suggested to him by these lines of Dante -- and is his only novel to be based on a story rather than an individual character. Kitty Fane is lovely but shallow, and when her bacteriologist husband discovers her adulterous affair, he forces her to accompany him to the heart of a cholera epidemic hoping that she will die. Bitterly unhappy, Kitty is compelled both by the desolation around her and by her awakening conscience to re-assess her life, past and present. Slowly and painfully she learns how to love; tragically, she learns too late. The cover shows The Embroidered Cloak by Francis Cadell, reproduced by courtesy of the Fine Arts Photographic Library