The Heat of the Day

This series of war novels from Vintage Classics presents eight powerful stories about the horror and waste of war—each a passionate plea to prevent its repetition.

A haunting portrayal of love and betrayal in a London hollowed by war.

It is wartime London, and the carelessness of people with no future flows through the evening air. Stella discovers that her lover Robert is suspected of selling information to the enemy. Harrison, the British intelligence agent on his trail, wants to bargain, the price for his silence being Stella herself. Caught between two men and unsure whom she can trust, the flimsy structures of Stella's life begin to crumble.

'Alive with the erotic tensions of the blackout, the Blitz and the heightened pleasures of sex in the proximity of death' - London Review of Books

With an introduction by Roy Foster.