Ashenden

This is the best spy book I have read. And it is deemed to be the best spy book by more authors and book lists than I can count. It is a quiet book about a spy-master around WWI (written by an ex-spy), so don't go into it expecting James Bond. Go into it expecting a more true-to-life depiction of what it is (or was) like to be a spy. But if you are not put off by quiet books, and can separate real life from fiction, you will probably love it. Highly recommended. ( )

Ashenden is a playwright who works for the British secret service as a spy in Europe during WWI. It’s based on Maugham’s own experiences. This is billed these days as a novel, but it’s also been published as Volume 3 of the short stories of W. Somerset Maugham. Ashenden is detached and sophisticated. He meets with shady characters who provide information, unmasks frauds and lures enemy agents to their deaths. There’s no plot as such, except in the individual stories, or some times in a series of 2 or 3 stories. The organization is chronological, with the last story about a mission to subvert the Russian Revolution, which happens too quickly for Ashenden to get his ducks in order. Reputedly the character of Ashenden inspired Ian Fleming’s creation of James Bond.Quirky characters are the interest in this book. There’s Chandra Lal, an Indian revolutionary working on the German side, whom Ashenden lures to his death using his lover as bait. There’s the “hairless Mexican” who’s an assassin hired by Ashenden’s boss, R., the head of the Secret Service. There’s Ashenden’s ex-lover, Anastasia Alexandrovna whom he meets again in Moscow and John Quincy Harrington, a naïve American businessman whom Ashenden meets on the Trans-Siberia railway to Moscow to get business contracts signed. ( )

Maugham wrote amazing short stories, and lived an amazing life. In this volume he recounts some of his adventures during the First World War, when he lived something of a charmed life in France, Switzerland, America and Russia. As always, his stories touch on concepts of love and loss and the fundamental lack of mutual understanding that so often plagues relationships. ( )

W. Somerset Maugham

Ashenden: or the British Agent

Vintage Classics, Paperback, 2000.
8vo. x+326 pp. Preface for The Collected Edition, 1934 [v-x].

First published by Heinemann, 1928.
First published in The Collected Edition with a new 6pp. preface by the author, 1934.

Contents

Preface

1. R.
2. A Domiciliary Visit
3. Miss King
4. The Hairless Mexican
5. The Dark Woman
6. The Greek
7. A Trip to Paris
8. Giulia Lazzari
9. Gustav
10. The Traitor
11. Behind the Scenes
12. His Excellency
13. The Flip of a Coin
14. A Chance Acquaintance
15. Love and Russian Literature
16. Mr. Harrington's Washing

-------------------------------------------------​

There has been a certain amount of confusion about this book of William Somerset Maugham which needs to be clarified. What follows is history, for detailed review of the contents see the third volume of Maugham's Collected Short Stories in four volumes.

First of all, it must be pointed out that this book is not a novel as some people believe. It is a collection of short stories sharing one main character - Ashenden - but skilfully separated into 16 chapters as to look like a novel. In the Heinemann edition from 1951, The Complete Short Stories of W. Somerset Maugham, 15 of these were combined and published as six short stories. In later complete editions of Maugham's short stories, titled Collected Short Stories and in four volumes, these six stories occupy the whole third volume having for company Sanatorium - the only other short story, to the best of my belief, with Ashenden as the main character; and the only one which was originally written as a one-piece story and published thus, in Maugham's last collection Creatures of Circumstance (1947).

The six aforementioned short stories and their multiple precursors are as follows:

Chapters 1 to 3 later merged into Miss King
Chapters 4 to 6 later merged into The Hairless Mexican
Chapters 7 and 8 later merged into Giulia Lazzari
Chapters 9 and 10 later merged into The Traitor
Chapters 11 and 12 later merged in His Excellency
Chapters 14 to 16 later merged into Mr. Harrington's Washing

The preface to the new Vintage edition from 2000 is a reprint of the preface written in 1934 when Ashenden appeared in The Collected edition of Maugham's works. As all of his prefaces, this one makes a fascinating read of which only the very essence appears in the preface to volume 2/3 (it depends which edition you're reading) of his complete/collected short stories. In the 1934 piece Maugham explores the significant difference between fact and fiction, and touches on how the former is arranged, or dramatized, into the latter. Hence, as he points out, these stories differ a great deal from what the French call reportage and should not be taken by the readers as a faithful representation of espionage, rather dull and tedious business in reality.

I surmise the volume would be of little interest to the great fans of spy stories, because the espionage stuff is merely a convenient vehicle for Maugham to investigate further his most beloved subject: the fascinating complexity and amazing unpredictability human nature. So those who admire the works of the great British writer must definitely read this book. Unless of course they have already done so reading his volumes of short stories; there is virtually no difference between the two versions except that the short stories, being actually merged chapters, are rather longer and that one little chapter from the original is missing. ( )

http://pergelator.blogspot.com/2008/05/vanity.html
http://pergelator.blogspot.com/2008/05/whats-in-name.html ( )