Seeking some excitement in her life, Kitty Fane embarks on an adulterous affair with the handsome Charles Townsend, but when her husband finds out he forces her to accompany him to a cholera epidemic in China.
A young American man named Larry Darrell traverses Europe, China, Burma, and India in search of meaning after experiencing the horrors of the First World War.
Philip Carey, a handicapped orphan, is brought up by a self-indulgent Victorian clergyman. Shedding his religious faith as a young man, he begins to study art in Paris, but finally returns to London to qualify as a doctor.
