Hope's dispatches from the French Front - from the villages, cafes, bars and junk shops of Languedoc - do not describe rural idyll but a world of rogues and raconteurs, lovers and losers whose two preoccupations are inextricably entwined: love and death.

'There is Sophie, a New Zealander who believes she is God. There is Lizzie from Lancashire who plies her trade as a prostitute with expatriate Britons only. But in Hope's hands this gallery become neither charming eccentrics nor colourful locals, but an exotic shifting populace that reads more like persuasive fiction than travelogue' Penelope Lively, Daily Telegraph

'He is a superb prose stylist, with a deep understanding of how a place works upon a person . . . Christopher Hope makes us taste and feel the lasting resonance of a simple meal of fresh bread, a twist of salt and fresh sardines in a damp, cold cottage in the Tarn' Catherine Lockerbie, Scotsman