The Razor's Edge

The Razor's Edge is a novel by the English writer W. Somerset Maugham, published in 1944. Its title comes from a verse in the Katha Upanishad, which the author paraphrases in the book's epigraph. It has been adapted for film twice, in 1946 and in 1984.

Maugham writes himself into the book as its narrator, reporting conversations and impressions rather than the thoughts of his characters, so the reader learns what Larry Darrell is doing from the outside. Larry has returned from the war to Chicago and to a circle that assumes he will marry, take a job and settle down, and he declines all of it.

He goes to Paris and studies for two years, then gives up on study and travels, taking whatever work he can find and living on very little. His fiancee, Isabel, gives him up rather than wait indefinitely, and the novel follows both of them afterwards, alongside people whose lives are arranged around money. What Larry is looking for becomes clearer to him only after he reaches India, and the narrator is careful to say that he never learned everything.