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Kitty, a beautiful but vain British woman, accepts the proposal of Walter Fane, a withdrawn doctor, in order to prevent herself from becoming an old girl. She left the flashy and empty social circle of London in the 1920s and followed Walter to the mysterious Eastern colony-Hong Kong.

"The Moon and Sixpence" is Maugham's masterpiece novel. This is not a mediocre popular novel, and the plot developed in the conflict with traditional moral concepts is not a flat moral education story. The story line of the novel is not complicated: Strickland, a middle-aged stockbroker, gave up his job and family, went to Paris to learn painting, and finally hid on an isolated island to paint for the rest of his life. After his death, he became famous and became a successful painter recognized by the world. This novel is not just a simple choice between "Moon" and "Sixpence". It is not a biography of the painter Gauguin. It just uses this character prototype to tell about the choices that almost everyone may encounter in life. Stripping away the main line, Maugham, as the narrator of the story, "I" intersperses those "digressions" in the middle of the story, those argumentative texts that explore ultimate issues such as whether spirit is greater than matter, whether personal pursuit is superior to social morality, etc. In fact, they are the essence of the entire book.