Barevný závoj – Maugham William Somerset (2023)

The central characters of the novel, set in British colonial China, are a young couple of completely different natures – a devotedly loving introverted man, a doctor by profession, and his wife, a girl from an upper-class English family who entered the marriage without love, but with the intention of changing her environment and social status. As a result of the accidentally revealed infidelity of his wife, the mismatched couple faces a crisis, and the woman is forced to travel with her husband to the Chinese interior, where a cholera epidemic has broken out. The oppressive living conditions of fighting the epidemic and the omnipresence of death significantly influence their lives and their relationship... Maugham is a connoisseur of human character and a master of character psychology. Beneath the captivating plot and dramatic storyline, something else, more impressive, unfolds before the reader's eyes: the inner transformation of a superficial young woman into a personality with a sense of true values and understanding of others. The Painted Veil has been adapted into film several times. In the most recent version from 2006, Hollywood stars Naomi Watts and Edward Norton excel. The novel was published in Czech as early as 1929 and is now being released for the second time in a new translation by Pavel Pokorný in the Contemporary World Prose series.