Veselice aneb Kostlivec ve skříni – Maugham William Somerset (2018)

The novel of a classic of English literature was first published in 1930, and readers soon recognized the true novelist Thomas Hardy in the character of the writer Edward Driffield. The story takes place from the 1890s to the end of the 1920s, when the narrator, also a writer named William Ashenden, is asked by his colleague Alroy Kear to help write the biography of the recently deceased Driffield. Maugham was an excellent observer and perfectly understood the environment of artists and people from higher social classes. In his novel, he depicts not only events and social settings with precision and wit but, above all, specific human characters. He masterfully portrays especially Driffield's first wife Rosie, who is the central figure of the novel. Rosie embodies untamed, immediate, and vibrant femininity, which deviates from conventional social norms and is often a thorn in the side of high society due to her relaxed morals, simplicity, and 'ordinariness.' The novel, written nearly a century ago, remains captivating for today's readers thanks to its masterful storytelling and perfectly crafted character psychology. The title was first published in Czech in 1975 and is now being released in a revised edition as the third...