Fiction should use life merely as raw material which it arranges in ingenious patterns. Like a painter creating a work of art by rearranging reality to achieve coherence and balance. The book closes with a tragic satire of two types of bourgeois - the Russian liberal and the American businessman - but there is an unusual generosity of spirit here, as if the confusion of the middle classes in a collapsing West had resulted in a strange camaraderie. Balachandran, V. (28 August 2011). "True fiction: The best spies are really quite boring". Sunday Guardian . Retrieved 23 August 2013. It may have been a bit of self-promotion, but Maugham later said that after the book was published Winston Churchill accused the author of contravening the Official Secrets Act, resulting in Maugham destroying 17 unpublished stories which presumably would have been a sequel.

I was very impressed by this book. It was the first book I read by W. Somerset Maugham. Maugham's beautiful writing evokes the life of a spy and is based on his own spying experiences during World War 1. The Hairless Mexicanadapted by Hugh Stewart and produced by Howard Rose. Part of the Saturday Night Theatre series. [11] On 7 August 1959, BBC Television broadcast a live version of "The Traitor." Written by Troy Kennedy Martin and directed by Gerard Glaister, it starred Stephen Murray as Ashenden, Donald Pleasence as Grantley Caypor, and Mai Zetterling as Frau Caypor. No copy is known to exist. Un viaggio condito di ironia e cinismo, commedia più che suspense, e soprattutto scrittura piacevole, buona costruzione delle trame, succosi incastri. I based my alternative cover on a brief incident in the novel where Ashenden, as a private joke, starts romancing a German agent, the Baroness Von Higgins and they go boating together. It also reflects the rather languid air of the novel.

There is also a story about the flamboyant “Hairless-Mexican”, who wears a wig, in fact several, but hasn’t a hair on his face. Maugham has the ability to make a despicable person interesting, intriguing and kind of fun. You should not like the person, but you do!

Ashenden, written by Somerset Maugham and loosely based on his experiences as an MI6 agent during World War One, was published in 1928. The novel opens with a brief description of Ashenden’s recruitment to the Secret Service by ‘R’. ‘R’ assigns Ashenden to Switzerland, a hotbed of spying because of its location and its neutrality. Miss King I'm wondering if one of his novels focusing on a love relationship would be more to my taste than this book. However, having said this, the chapter where Ashenden recalls a past love affair of his own ('Love and Russian Literature') is probably the weakest section of the book. This chapter made me really dislike Ashenden himself, though I hadn't warmed to him anyway as he seems so self-satisfied.Maugham described ‘R’ as the Head of the Secret Service. This is obviously a reference to the actual head of the Secret Service, Mansfield Cumming, who signed himself ‘C’. There is no room for love. Maugham notes that artists do not make good lovers, They love themselves above all. But Ashenden has one love interest: the married woman, Anastasia Alexandrovna Semenovitch alias Delilah. He had planned on marrying her once, but after a week spent in Paris with her, after eating only scrambled eggs every morning, her favourite, Ashenden fled to America. Anche se poi si scopre che i racconti di spionaggio sono solo i primi cinque, e che la spia ricorrente, Ashenden, è uno scrittore, che in veste di spia è più bravo come psicologo che agente, più capace di leggere e interpretare che di scoprire, più attore che risolutore.

Bírtam. Csak a legeslegutolsó bekezdésben Maugham – merőben indokolatlanul – ne vágta volna hozzám a giccsgránátot. In the tale told by an ambassador, in a literary sleight of hand, a man speaks of another where Maugham is clearly speaking of himself in the voice of the first. Kathleen Kuiper, Cakes and Ale (novel by Maugham). Britannica.com, 2011. Accessed 23 November 2013. Tags: Analysis of Somerset Maugham’s Ashenden, appreciation of Somerset Maugham’s Ashenden, essays of Somerset Maugham’s Ashenden, guide of Somerset Maugham’s Ashenden, notes of Somerset Maugham’s Ashenden, plot of Somerset Maugham’s Ashenden, Somerset Maugham’s Ashenden, Somerset Maugham’s Ashenden criticism, Somerset Maugham’s Ashenden essays, Somerset Maugham’s Ashenden guide, Somerset Maugham’s Ashenden notes, Somerset Maugham’s Ashenden plot, Somerset Maugham’s Ashenden structure, Somerset Maugham’s Ashenden summary, Somerset Maugham’s Ashenden themes, structure of Somerset Maugham’s Ashenden, summary of Somerset Maugham’s Ashenden, themes of Somerset Maugham’s Ashenden Related ArticlesSomerset Maugham borrows heavily from his WW1 experiences as a spy based in Switzerland to spin this series of tales about his fictional alter-ego, Ashenden. The tales go beyond the usual cloak and dagger stuff to pry into the empty and deceptive lives of the characters, and it makes one wonder whether these spy games ever advanced the lives of their players or the fates of nations that set them in motion. Everyone in Geneva is a spy of some sort – it’s a lucrative profession during a war when other occupations have restricted opportunity. Maugham begins this 1927 novel with a preface explaining “This book is founded on my experiences in the Intelligence Department during the war, but rearranged for the purposes of fiction. Fact is a poor story-teller.” At least in outline, Ashenden’s career mirrors Maugham’s. He spends the first part of the war in Switzerland before being sent to Russia in 1917. As Maugham describes, “In 1917 I went to Russia. I was sent to prevent the Bolshevik Revolution and to keep Russia in the war. The reader will know that my efforts did not meet with success.” Ashenden travels through Russia by train from Vladivostok to Petrograd. Maugham did this too. Maugham was a spy during this war, spending much of his time in Switzerland and it is claimed, had he been in Tzarist Russia 6 months to a year earlier, he might have influenced the Bolshevik Revolution. William Somerset Maugham was born in Paris in 1874. He spoke French even before he spoke a word of English, a fact to which some critics attribute the purity of his style.