The Comfort of Strangers - Tapa dura

"As the best young writer on this island, McEwan's evocations of feeling and place and his analysis of mood and relationship remain haunting and compelling."--"The Times" "As always, McEwan manages his own idiom with remarkable grace and inventiveness; his characters are at home in their dreams, and so is he."--"Guardian" "His writing is exact, tender, funny, voluptuous, disturbing."--"The Times" "The Maestro."--"New Statesman" "McEwan has--a style and a vision of life of his own...No one interested in the state and mood of contemporary Britain can afford not to read him."--John Fowles "A sparkling and adventurous writer."--Dennis Potter "Haunting and compelling." -"The Times" "McEwan, that master of the taciturn macabre, so organizes his narrative that, without insisting anything, every turn and glimpse is another tightening of the noose. The evils of power and the power of evil are transmitted with a steely coolness, and in a prose that has a feline grace." -"Observer" "From the Trade Paperback edition."

As their holiday unfolds, Colin and Maria are locked into their own intimacy. They groom themselves meticulously, as though there waits someone who cares deeply about how they appear. Then they meet a man with a disturbing story to tell and become drawn into a fantasy of violence and obsession.