W. Somerset Maugham · 1944 · global

W. Somerset Maugham's 1944 novel, narrated by Maugham himself. Larry Darrell, an American hollowed out by the First World War, rejects wealth and marriage to wander in search of meaning: from Chicago to Paris, down a French coal mine, into a German monastery, and finally to an ashram in southern India modelled on the hermitage of the sage Ramana Maharshi. Having found his peace, he resolves to return to America and disappear into ordinary life as a working man. One of the first popular Western novels to take Eastern philosophy seriously.

1. 1
   Chicago

   Larry Darrell, a pilot hollowed out by the war, breaks his engagement and refuses an ordinary life, choosing to loaf and to seek.

2. 2
   New York

   East across the country to New York, and a berth worked on an Atlantic liner bound for France.

3. 3
   Cherbourg

   The liner puts in at Cherbourg, his first landfall on the far side of the ocean.

4. 4
   Paris

   To Paris, to read and study among the bookstalls.

5. 5
   Lens

   Down a coal mine in northern France, where a mystical Pole turns his mind toward the East.

6. 6
   Bonn

   A Benedictine monastery in Germany, but the God of the West cannot answer his question.

7. 7
   Marseille

   South through France to Marseille, and a passage worked east through Suez toward India.

8. 8
   Bombay

   He works his passage on an ocean liner to India.

9. 9
   Travancore

   And south to Travancore, two years in an ashram, and a sunrise on a mountain where everything at last comes clear.