The Married Man Av Edmund White

<p><b>¿Poignant and challenging...A love story, yet with an ambition and sweep that make it much more than that...subtle, complex, unsparing and profound¿ <i>Daily Telegraph</i></b><br><br>Austin Smith, a middle aged American, works out in a Paris gym - an ordinary day, except that he catches the eye of a stranger, Julien, a young French architect with a gleam in his eye. To Austin''s amused astonishment, life takes on the colour of romance. <br><br>As they dash between Bohemian suppers and glittering salons, they deal with comic clashes of cultures, of ages, of temperaments. But there is sadness in Julien''s past and a grim cloud on the horizon. Soon, with increasing desperation, their quest for health and happiness drives them to Rome, Venice, Key West, Montreal and Providence - landscapes soaked with feeling which lead, in the end to the bleak, baking sands of the Sahara where their love is pushed to its ultimate crisis.</p>