Two lovers, separated by circumstance, begin to write letters. Tentatively at first, they explore their feelings and their ability to express them – their shared joys and love for one another, as well as cherished past moments and everything that they miss.

As time goes on, the letters expand, recounting their evolving lives: his as part of the Expeditionary Force sent to China during the Boxer Rebellion, hers as a medical student and then a doctor, alone in the city, surrounded by sickness, sex and death. As they never receive the other’s letters, their reflections turn inward, at once philosophically speculative and sharply observant. The letters are full of love and yearning, for each other and for the quandary that is the world as they’ve found it, uplifting and harrowing in equal measure.

The original title of the book translates from Russian roughly as ‘Letter-Writing Manual’ and Shishkin has used this epistolary form to free the novel from narrative constraint, letting his characters explore their existence and mortality in their own words, as addressed to the only one who will understand. In the end, one wonders whether our two are even writing to each other, so disparate have they become, and so seemingly distant in time. One of the most intensely human books I’ve ever read.

Andrew Cornish is a former employee of Readings.