The Razor's Edge
The Razor's Edge is a book by W. Somerset Maugham published in 1944. Its epigraph reads, "The sharp edge of a razor is difficult to pass over; thus the wise say the path to Salvation is hard," taken from a verse in the Katha-Upanishad.
The Razor's Edge tells the story of Larry Darrell, an American pilot traumatised by his experiences in World War I, who sets off in search of some transcendent meaning in his life. The story begins through the eyes of Larry's friends and acquaintances as they witness his personality change after the War. His rejection of conventional life and search for meaningful experience allows him to thrive while the more materialistic characters suffer reversals of fortune. The book was twice adapted into film, first in 1946 starring Tyrone Power and Gene Tierney, and Herbert Marshall as Maugham and Anne Baxter as Sophie, and then a 1984 adaptation starring Bill Murray.
Plot
Maugham begins by characterising his story as not really a novel but a thinly veiled true account. He includes himself as a minor character, a writer who drifts in and out of the lives of the major players. Larry Darrell's lifestyle is contrasted throughout the book with that of his fiancée’s uncle, Elliott Templeton, an American expatriate living in Paris and a shallow and unrepentant yet generous snob. For example, while Templeton's Roman Catholicism embraces the hierarchical trappings of the Church, Larry's proclivities tend towards the 13th-century Flemish mystic and saint John of Ruysbroeck.
The Razor's Edge (disambiguation)
The Razor's Edge is a 1944 novel by W. Somerset Maugham.
The Razor's Edge may also refer to:
Film and television
Literature
Music
Razor's Edge (novel)
Razor's Edge (Russian: Лезвие бритвы, Lezvie britvy, Edge of the Razor) is a 1963 science fiction novel by the Soviet writer and paleontologist Ivan Yefremov. It includes four parts and is notable for a huge amount of the scientific facts and dynamism.
Efremov used the word "eidetica" as an ability to a deliberate dreams, when man dreams in full details about something that is known to him only as told by friends, read in books or seen in pictures. In this novel such capability to see such panoramic color images appears in one of the novel characters after he was contused in time of Great Patriotic War. Later on he arrives in Moscow, USSR to ask the doctors explain this symptom. While healed he sees an even more detailed dream, but after he loses his unique ability.
Plot
The plot contains some storylines which are intertwined. We can call this storylines according their setting places. The first one is the Soviet Storyline and is about the medical doctor and psychophysiologist Ivan Girin, who studies the hidden possibilities of human brain and is interesting in human beauty. The second storyline is about Italians who go to Africa to find diamond, but find Alexander's The Great Crone with mysterious minerals. The third storyline is about Dayaram Ramamoorty, the sculptor from India, and Amrita Tillottama, the dancer. The characters meet each other in the end of the novel.
Podcasts:
