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The Moon and Sixpence (1919) is a novel by W. Somerset Maugham. Inspired by the life of French painter Paul Gauguin, Maugham set out to capture the disconnect between an artist's desire to create and their obligations to their loved ones and society. Praised for its multifaceted portrayal of tortured genius and wasted talent, The Moon and Sixpence explores the distance between expectation and desire in a man whose decisions, however, hastily made, are done with the loftiest of intentions. Some people live their whole lives without daring to dream, going from moment to moment in a haze of dreary reality, following expectation from birth to grave. Strickland seems to be one of these people-singularly dedicated to his work as a London stockbroker, uninterested in the arts, married as though through obligation alone. One day, he unexpectedly leaves his wife and children to pursue a career as a painter in Paris, completely and irrevocably severing himself from the professional and...

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