{"product_id":"2026200017068-secondhand-of-human-bondage","title":"Of Human Bondage","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eCondition remarks:\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBook: Good\u003cbr\u003eJacket: No dust jacket\u003cbr\u003ePages: Good\u003cbr\u003eCondition remarks: Condition as shown in image\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eOne of the great semi-autobiographical novels of the twentieth century, Of Human Bondage chronicles the turbulent coming-of-age of Philip Carey, a sensitive, club-footed orphan who burns with ambition and aches with longing as he navigates the treacherous waters of art, medicine, and love in fin-de-siècle Europe. From the suffocating piety of a Kentish vicarage to the bohemian studios of Paris and the teeming wards of a London hospital, Philip's journey is one of obsession and disillusionment, most devastatingly embodied in his ruinous, irrational passion for the cruel and common waitress, Mildred Rogers.\n\nW. Somerset Maugham writes with a cool, unflinching clarity that strips away sentimentality to reveal the raw mechanics of desire, ambition, and the painful human search for meaning. Beneath its episodic surface, the novel argues a profoundly Spinozist philosophy — that life's pattern is one we weave ourselves, and that freedom is found only when we accept that it has no inherent meaning at all. Maugham's prose is economical yet deeply felt, a style that earned the novel its place as an enduring cornerstone of British literary realism. For those who have ever been enslaved by a love they could not justify, or a dream they could not abandon, Of Human Bondage remains an uncomfortably intimate mirror.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Secondhand Stock","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":49269354889435,"sku":"2026200017068-SECONDHAND","price":10.0,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0523\/7646\/9701\/files\/e55e25d7-e4ba-4b36-a702-fe7ecfcc6872.png?v=1788999328","url":"https:\/\/bookgrocer.com\/products\/2026200017068-secondhand-of-human-bondage","provider":"Book Grocer","version":"1.0","type":"link"}