Four Letter Word

Is there any communication more potent than the love letter? Is there any charge greater than seeing those words on paper? The editors of this collection decided to ask some of the most important writers of our time to compose a fictional love letter - breathing new life into a forgotten custom, and affording words themselves the power of seduction that they richly deserve. The result is an iridescent picture of what love looks like in the twenty-first century: a collage of methods and moods. Each letter is radically different from the others, and all but one are published for the first time. A perfect gift, this book is also an ingenious showcase for many of our most beloved writers.

Love: a vague word for an emotion so ethereal it's not always possible to demonstrate. But there still exists an assumption that experiences - and, by extension, the emotions that experiences evoke - are more resonant when you write them down. And it's that faith, that belief that writing down these naked, shocking, inadvisable and probably destructive feelings make them worthwhile, that powers this collection, each piece of which is a testimony to the creative powers of our leading writers today, and every piece of which will move you.