Moon and Sixpence (Barnes & Noble Library of Essential Reading)

In "The Moon and Sixpence", Charles Strickland, is a respectable London stockbroker who decides in middle age to abandon his wife and children and devote himself to his true passion: art. Strickland's destructive desire for self-expression takes him first to Paris to learn the craft of painting, and finally to Tahiti in the South Pacific. "The Moon and Sixpence" remains a complex and engaging novel echoing Maugham's own struggles between artistic expression and public respectability, and between his public persona and private life.