Why mortals bloomed like flowers and crumbled to nothing? Why their absence left a gnawing ache, a hollow void that could never be filled? And how everything they once were, that spark within them, could be extinguished so completely yet the world did not collapse under the weight of so much pain and grief.’

‘He is a collection of tissues and cells delicately and intricately conjoined and brought to life for only an instant. It will take just one sharp collision or a fall to render them inanimate again,’ realises Rabih, the quiet hero of Alain de Botton’s The Course of Love. ‘He is only a visitor who has managed to confuse his self with the world. He h