In an overcrowded hospital in war-torn Bosnia, a Muslim soldier and a young Serbian woman?one crippled, the other blind?find solace in each other in “Pavilion 24.? In small-town Ontario, a father and daughter relive the summer when a mysterious, ethereal girl entered their lives and a brutal assault changed everything. In an apartment peopled with an eclectic mix of bohemian ex-patriots, a man pursues a young suicidal waif at the height of the sexual revolution in 1970s Paris. So this is love. This is squalor. From Paris to Italy to Bosnia to rural Ontario, these nine stories take the reader on a journey of love, sex, violence and the politics of desire. Here, memory and longing serve as a catalyst to truth and identity, and offer respite from a world gone achingly numb. Madly romantic, subtly subversive and utterly accomplished, Gilbert Reid's collection is about love in all of its forms'sometimes sad, sometimes harsh, sometimes perverse, but always, always beautiful.

GILBERT REID is a veteran television and radio producer and writer, who lived and worked for thirty years in Europe. He was nominated for a Gemini Award for Best Documentary Writing for Storming the Ridge, and for eleven years he was the Director of the Canadian Cultural Center in Rome. He has written for the Globe and Mail, the Times Literary Supplement, and many other publications, and he has interviewed such personalities as Robert Altman, Marguerite Duras, Sergio Leone, and Northrop Frye. He is the author of the critically acclaimed story collection So This Is Love. His short story, “Pavilion 24,” was nominated for Best Fiction by the Canadian Magazine Awards. He lives in Toronto.

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