An Affair of the Heart

Each story in An Affair of the Heart questions the apparently romantic title through its exploration of the enigmatic state of mind known as love. Desire and identity; displacement - emotional and geographical; the relationship between ambition, circumstances and emotion; the often difficult co-existence of passion and intellect; these are the subjects of the fifteen fascinating narratives.

Men and women reckon the worth of relationships past and present, from steamy New Orleans to urbane Paris, from metropolitan Chelsea to the industrial valleys and rural hinterlands of Wales. Frank and delicate, revelatory and secret, Clare Morgan''s stories offer insights into human nature which are in turn punchily realistic and suggestively questioning.

"Among the stories that most struck me were Clare Morgan''s ''L''Hotel Des Grands Hommes'', about a would-be woman writer who gets a glimpse of the American writer Raymond Carver in her Paris Hotel..." - The Times on Classwork

"I like the wry and deliberately understated economy" - Malcolm Bradbury on Fencing

Born and brought up in rural Monmouthshire, Clare Morgan now divides her time between Gwynedd, Oxford and London. A graduate of the University of East Anglia''s MA in Creative Writing, she also has a doctorate from Oxford. She is currently Lecturer in English at Brasenose College, Oxford. She has published a novel, A Touch of the Other (Gollancz), as well as critical articles. Her short stories, which have appeared in many magazines and anthologies, are collected for the first time in An Affair of the Heart.