The Perfect Stranger

The early years of poet P.J. Kavanagh's life - which took him from a Butlin's Holiday Camp to Switzerland and Paris, to a battlefield in Korea, to Oxford and Barcelona, and finally to Java - made little sense to him, until 'something extraordinary happened' his meeting with Sally, 'the perfect stranger'.

This tender, funny and quite unsentimental record of the uniqueness of human love is as much a celebration of joy - despite its abrupt and shocking conclusion - as it is a poet's tribute of thanks.

P.J. KAVANAGH was born in England in 1931. Wounded in the Korean war, he later went to Oxford. He has worked as a lecturer, actor, broadcaster and columnist and has written novels, two volumes of autobiography and essays, and edited anthologies. His name is closely associated with the poetry of Ivor Gurney, a seminal edition of whose work he prepared in 1982. Carcanet publish two books of his poems and The Perfect Stranger.