Winter Love by Han Suyin

An unheralded queer classic set in wartime London—“Han Suyin’s outstanding achievement . . . her finest novel.” (Alison Hennegan).

As a college student in London during the bitterly cold winter of 1944, Red falls in love with her married classmate Mara. Their affair unleashes a physical passion, jealousy, and self-doubt that sweep all her previous experiences aside and will leave her changed forever. 

Set against the rubble and austerity of wartime London—barrage balloons overhead, blackout curtains drawn, cafés eking out tins of powdered egg—Winter Love evokes the exhilaration and the peril of living and loving in a city under siege.

First published in 1962, this novella was long overlooked in Han’s prolific career. “Probably the best thing she has ever written” (Daily Telegraph), it is also Han Suyin’s most unexpected, tender, and stirring work.