An Aspidistra In Babylon By H. E. Bates

All Books are second hand

This collection of four novellas each present a striking contrast in theme, place, character and atmosphere.
A young girl being remorselessly corrupted, while under the illusion of love, in a small English garrison town; two English holiday-makers, middle-aged, diffident and confused, playing a game of emotional hide-and-seek with each other on an Italian lake, their affair half-comic, half-sad; a fruit-farmer, unable to satisfy the demands of a selfish and stupid wife trying to climb the cultural ladder, who deludes himself into thinking he can evolve a new kind of apple; and lastly a South Sea Island girl, ugly and primitive, giving everything in a passion for a passing traveller.
To each story bates brings his own special quality of poetic realism, evocation and understanding of human values that have made him a master of this particular form.