'Slender, cynical and bruisingly sexy . exquisite' Daily Telegraph The 1960s. Philip Dean, a footloose Yale dropout, is touring provincial France and sometimes Paris in a borrowed, once elegant car. He begins a mismatched affair with a young shop girl namedAnne-Marie. Together they burn in an everyday but stunningly sensual paradise. A Sport and A Pastime established James Salter's reputation as one of the finest writers of our time. It is remarkable for its eroticism, its luminous prose and its ability to explore the boundaries between what is dreamt and what is lived, between body and soul. 'Cool, compelling and brilliantly written' Time 'He has written three books that everyone should read before they die: A Sport and a Pastime , Light Years , and his recollections, Burning the Days ' Independent 'As Lolita is a kind of valentine to Nabokov's adopted, gorgeously vulgar America, so A Sport and a Pastime is a valentine to Salter's France' Joyce Carol Oates, New York Review of Books.