The Devil in the Flesh (Penguin Classics)

Written when its author was a teenager, this semi-autobiographical "confession" is the story of an illicit love affair between a sixteen-year-old boy and the wife of a soldier during the final year of the First World War. They meet in secret, intoxicated by passion, burning the letters she receives from her husband. Even when their scandal is discovered, they hurtle desperately on, towards tragedy.

Amoral, spare and unsettling, The Devil in the Flesh became an instant bestseller and its author was hailed as a genius, before dying tragically at the age of twenty.