Of Human Bondage

W. Somerset Maugham’s 1915 novel follows Philip Carey, orphaned at nine and born with a club foot, from a Kent vicarage to Germany, Paris and London. He tries art in Paris, returns to study medicine and falls obsessively for a waitress named Mildred. Maugham drew on his own life but insisted it was a novel, not an autobiography. Abraham Verghese read it again in 2022 and says it, with The Citadel, made him want to be a doctor.