Abstract: Under the gaze of the “Imperial Eyes,” William Somerset Maugham completed the narrative writing of diseases in three collections of short stories set in the South Sea, namely, The Casuarina Tree, Ah King, and The Trembling of a Leaf. In the disease narrative discourse of these stories are found metaphors for the fact of the decline of the British Empire, such as “delirium tremens,” the discriminatory narratives of tropical diseases such as “philippinitis,” and the use of “pyrexia medicine” as a redemption element to aid in the construction of plot clues. In Maugham’s travel writings set in the South Sea, the critique of barbaric colonialism is intricately interwoven with the resurgence of the “civilizing mission” ideology, ultimately endowing his disease narratives with a dual function: they metaphorically signify the decline of the British Empire while simultaneously contributing to the construction of British imperial discourse. Consequently, they perpetuate an Orientalist distortion in the global perception of the region.

Key words: William Somerset Maugham, short story of the South Sea, travel writing, disease narrative