A sport and a pastime - James Salter

As nearly perfect as any American fiction I know, is how Reynolds Price ( The New York Times ) described this classic that has been a favorite of readers, both here and in Europe, for almost forty years.

Set in provincial France in the 1960s, James Salter's A Sport and a Pastime is the intensely carnal story--part shocking reality, part feverish dream --of a love affair between a footloose Yale dropout and a young French girl.

There is the seen and the unseen--and pages that burn with a rare intensity.