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With an introduction by Sarah Hall
The 1960s. Philip Dean, a footloose Yale dropout, is touring provincial France and sometimes Paris in a borrowed, once elegant car. He begins a mismatched affair with a young shop girl named Anne-Marie. Together they burn in an everyday but stunningly sensual paradise.
A Sport and A Pastime is a seductive classic that established James Salter's reputation as one of the finest writers of our time. It is remarkable for its eroticism, its luminous prose and its ability to explore the boundaries between what is dreamt and what is lived, between body and soul.
About the author
James Salter is the author of numerous books, including the novels Solo Faces, Light Years, A Sport and a Pastime, The Arm of Flesh (revised as Cassada), and The Hunters; the memoirs Gods of Tin and Burning the Days; the collections Dusk and Other Stories, which won the 1989 PEN/Faulkner Award, and Last Night, which won the Rea Award for the Short Story and the PEN/Malamud Award; and Life Is Meals: A Food Lover's Book of Days, written with Kay Salter. He died in 2015.
Summary
With an introduction by Sarah Hall
The 1960s. Philip Dean, a footloose Yale dropout, is touring provincial France and sometimes Paris in a borrowed, once elegant car. He begins a mismatched affair with a young shop girl named Anne-Marie. Together they burn in an everyday but stunningly sensual paradise.
A Sport and A Pastime is a seductive classic that established James Salter's reputation as one of the finest writers of our time. It is remarkable for its eroticism, its luminous prose and its ability to explore the boundaries between what is dreamt and what is lived, between body and soul.
Foreword
The seductive classic that established Salter's reputation as one of the finest prose stylists of our time
Additional text
To read Salter's work is always to embark on a journey through a life lived - the beautiful and the colourless, the tragic and the sustaining . . . exceptional fiction that cuts to our most cherished and at times most private truths. Read him when you can, his novels about sex and flying and war and love - those moments that should outshine all others - and your own world, your own moments worth remembering will appear all the brighter for it
Report
A great literary novel but also the most erotic book ever written Jonathan Dee Financial Times
