John Berger, storyteller, critic and political writer, brings us this tender and bittersweet novel of a man's dreams of freedom and romance. In his sixty-third year, quite unexpectedly, William Corker, the genteel proprietor of a London employment agency, moves out of the house he has shared with his overbearing sister for most of his life. In this poignant tale of a late-life awakening, Berger creates a character of astonishing depth and liveliness - a man whose fantasies and ambitions are at once splendid and tragic.