Casuarina Trees

Name: Casuarina Trees
ISBN: 9787532756957

W. Somerset MaughamShanghai Translation Publishing House · ChinaDec 2016

4.3

Word count: 130K words
Chapters: 10
ISBN: 9787532756957

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Summary

The Casuarina Tree is a representative short-story collection by W. Somerset Maugham, "the greatest short-story writer" and "master storyteller" of England, containing six of his finest short stories. Roughly equal in length and falling between the novella and the short story, they are all set in Malaya and Borneo and vividly depict the experiences of Westerners (mostly English) in the Far Eastern colonies, particularly the spiritual torments they suffer after being cut off from the Western civilized world they came from.

Editor's review

The Casuarina Tree is a weighty collection in Maugham's career, containing six stories set in the South Seas. Unlike The Moon and Sixpence or Of Human Bondage, which center on individual spiritual exploration, this work turns its lens on the white British community in Southeast Asia during the colonial era. With a detachment verging on cruelty, Maugham shows how these so-called "civilized men" gradually expose the fragility, hypocrisy, and decay of human nature in a hot, unfamiliar, and seductive foreign environment. A lingering sense of lassitude and despair pervades the book; the casuarina tree, a common tropical plant, recurs throughout the stories, symbolizing a state of existence from which one can neither fit in nor break free, a silent footnote to the characters' spiritual wasteland.

The value of this work lies in its profound, pathology-like social observation. Maugham is not telling adventure tales but conducting a precise experiment on human nature. He places his characters in a "vacuum" far from the moral constraints of Britain and observes how pride, prejudice, desire, and loneliness ferment and turn foul. His style remains spare and sharp, his pacing unhurried, yet the chill and disillusionment seeping through the lines are more concentrated and intense than in any of his novels. Reading The Casuarina Tree is not a pleasant exotic experience but a sober journey into the dark side of human nature. It shows us that when the veneer of civilization is stripped away by the tropical climate, what is revealed may not be an authentic self but an even more desolate spiritual ruin.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Readers with a deep knowledge of Maugham's work who wish to explore his cold realist side
Researchers or enthusiasts interested in colonial literature and postcolonial cultural reflection
Readers who prefer short stories with a strong atmosphere, focused on psychological dissection and human predicament
Literary readers who appreciate calm, restrained, and detached narrative style

Not a good fit for

Readers seeking light entertainment or a warm, healing reading experience
Readers expecting the romantic image of Maugham's typical "gentleman adventurer"

Reading tips

Reading in order is recommended, to appreciate how Maugham builds the same suffocating South Seas world from different angles
Note the symbolic links between natural scenery (especially the casuarina tree and the climate) and the characters' psychological states
After reading, compare with Conrad's Heart of Darkness or Forster's A Passage to India to consider how different writers represent the colonial predicament

About the publisher

Shanghai Translation Publishing House China · Founded in 1978

Shanghai Translation Publishing House is a Chinese publisher oriented mainly toward translation and publishing. Its publications cover foreign literature, world classics and classic works, as well as social culture, folk literature and classical poetry. The database contains 2,618 titles, including Never Let Me Go, Les Misérables (2 volumes), Don Quixote (illustrated collector's edition), The Complete Comedies of Molière (4 volumes), The Complete Novels of Kafka (3 volumes), The Collected Works of Dostoevsky (9-volume set), Reason and Persons, and Oedipus Rex (Translation Classics). Its author resources include foreign writers such as Kazuo Ishiguro, Victor Hugo, Cervantes and Molière, as well as translators such as Zheng Kelu, Sun Jiameng, Li Jianwu and Zhang Kun. The publisher has brands such as "Translation Classics Selections" and "Translation Documentary," and emphasizes translated works in foreign literature and the humanities and social sciences, while also publishing bilingual dictionaries and foreign-language educational books. Public information is limited; the above is based on the book information in the database.

版权信息
原序
赴宴之前
铁行轮船公司
驻地分署
环境的力量
胆怯
信
原跋
译后记

FAQ

Are the stories in The Casuarina Tree true?

They are based on and adapted from Maugham's travels and observations in the South Seas between 1916 and 1917. They carry a strong sense of reality and period detail; though fictional, they reflect the real ecology and spiritual crisis of colonial society at the time.

How does this book differ from Maugham's other short-story collections, such as The Trembling of a Leaf?

The Trembling of a Leaf also contains South Seas stories but covers a broader range of subjects. The Casuarina Tree is highly unified in theme, focusing entirely on the spiritual decline of white colonizers; its overall tone is darker, more concentrated, and more sharply critical, and it is often regarded as the pinnacle of his South Seas writing.

Why is the book called The Casuarina Tree?

The casuarina is a common roadside tree in the South Seas, resembling a pine but not one, tolerant of salt and resistant to wind and sand. In the book it is both the physical backdrop of the stories and a central image, symbolizing the existence of these drifting Europeans—seemingly resilient but in fact rootless and out of place, suggesting a false adaptation and an inner barrenness.

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About the author

W. Somerset Maugham Author · British · 1874–1965

W. Somerset Maugham (1874–1965) was a British novelist, playwright and short-story writer, born in Paris. He trained in medicine and turned to writing after publishing his first novel, Liza of Lambeth, in 1897. His representative works include Of Human Bondage, The Moon and Sixpence, Cakes and Ale and The Razor's Edge, as well as a substantial body of short stories. His plain, direct style and his insight into human nature and society place his works among foreign literature and classics. Maugham excelled in both the novel and the short story; his restrained narration and penetrating observation have earned him a wide readership in Chinese, and this site holds 176 of his works.