Ashenden

By W. Somerset Maugham

Book Overview

A thief, languishing in prison for stealing moments, escapes and becomes a chronometric fugitive. Women wait in a long, endless line, night and day, without knowing what is at the beginning of the line. An otherworldly marble called the Ustek Cloudy passes through the hands of Ambrose Bierce, Amelia Earhart, and D. B. Cooper just before they each disappear off the face of the earth. Whether they are called fantasy, magical realism, science fiction, or parodies, the stories in this collection?the first from Gay Terry?blend the real and the fantastic in an imaginative and mischievous way. Written in the tradition of Ray Bradbury, Angela Carter, and Edgar Allan Poe, these contemporary fables present remarkable characters trapped in unusual situations.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0140174311
• ISBN13: 9780140174311
• Release Date: April 1976
• Publisher: Penguin Books
• Length: 256 Pages
• Weight: 0.43 lbs.
• Dimensions: 5.0" x 1.0" x 7.0"

Customer Reviews

Book Overview is Incorrect

The book overview for this book is a misplaced description of another book. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Ashenden: Or the British Agent is a 1927 collection of loosely linked stories by W. Somerset Maugham. It is partly based on the author's experience as a member of British Intelligence in Europe during the First World War.

A literary James Bond.

An amazing fictional account of Maugham's real life adventures as a spy for Great Britain during WW I. Written in Maughm's usual concise and elogant prose, these stories make the reader root for Ashenden who is nothing short of a literary James Bond. This account, written as a collection of short independent stories, shows that, when in the hands of an author with a command of the English language, suspense and intrigue can be create in a book in other ways besides stringing together one action scene after another. Simply Maugham at his best