The Perfect Stranger

'It's hard to think of a memoir that describes the experience [of love] with as much honesty, passion and precision.' David Nicholls

First published in 1966, this extraordinary memoir has collected a passionate band of devotees. Written with a poet's precision, it is a funny, absorbing and brilliantly portrayed rite of passage – from school playing fields to war's battlefields, holiday camps to writers' hang-outs, Brighton to Paris, Korea to Oxford, Barcelona to Jakarta … Driving the narrator is a desire to recount the effect of a singular young woman; the love of her and the loss of her.

A joyous and movingly wise evocation of youth, travel and love; those moments of maximum brilliance, at the edge of possibility.