Engaging short stories from the master - most redolent of a vanished age and way of life. ( )

It is almost impossible to avoid thinking about Conrad while reading these stories of Maugham's set in Southeast Asia. There is a startling difference in how the two writers use their backdrop. With Maugham, it is just that, a backdrop. The stories focused as they are on the domestic and individual psyches of British of a certain social class, could be set almost anywhere in the British Empire. Not so with Conrad, who actually incorporated the people and the very land itself into his work. See Almayer's Folly and Lord Jim. As a result, Conrad paints with a far grander psychological canvas than does Maugham. Not that the Maugham stories are uninteresting. Quite the opposite, they do provide a stark picture of a certain class of Britisher at a unique turn in the history of the world--right before the empire was to be dismantled. And it is far from a sympathetic one. Drunkards, failures, depressives, and the sexually frustrated populate these tales. The rivers and the jungle only provide a boundary to lock these people within.

This is a companion book to another volume of Maugham stories set in Singapore, Malaya, Borneo, and sometimes a little beyond, Far Eastern Tales. I do not know if the editor so intended, but this second set seems somewhat more focused on the interior world of the protagonists and their self obsessed musings. And then, maybe not. ( )

Among general readers, Somerset Maugham is known primarily for his masterwork Of Human Bondage and for his short stories set in Asia and the south seas. The scope of his literary output was of course far broader -- he was the author of many novels and plays and numerous short stories of several genres, not to mention his autobiographical works, travel writing, and literary analyses of other author's works. Maugham reportedly sold some 80 million books during his lifetime, and his work is said to have spawned more films than any other author, of his time and ours.

As a followup to Far Eastern Tales, this collection presents 10 short stories gathered by editor John Whitehead from previous compilations, centering on the theme suggested in the title. Nearly every story included in More Far Eastern Tales is worthwhile, and some are real gems. The Outstation I would rank as a small masterpiece; I have read it many times over the years, each time with great enjoyment. Other personal favorites include The Letter and the wickedly humorous The Vessel of Wrath; the first of these may be familiar to older readers and students of film from the movie with Bette Davis. Other works of special note include The Yellow Streak (based a dangerous incident in which Maugham came close to losing his life), Flotsam and Jetsam (a well-drawn and powerful portrait of a man and wife, irrevocably trapped in a marriage), and The Book-Bag. Rounding out the collection are The Four Dutchmen, Masterson, Raw Material and The Back of Beyond.

While I would recommend the precursor to this volume (Far Eastern Tales) for a first introduction to Maugham's short stories, the present compilation offers an excellent set of tales guaranteed to bring enjoyment to the discriminating reader, and likely to inspire a search for more of his work. ( )