Memoir Overview

This 1919 memoir, a huge bestseller that was made into an Oscar-winning movie of the same name, chronicles O'Brien's pre-World War I travels in the South Seas. There he encountered beautiful, semi-clad women, such as the evocatively named maid, Vanquished Often, and spent long, drowsy days and nights full of passion and mystery—a romanticized yet vivid portrait of a vanished time and people.