We all know the headiness and excitement of the early days of love. But what comes after? In Edinburgh, a couple, Rabih and Kirsten, fall in love. They get married, they have children—but no long-term relationship is as simple as “happily ever after.” The Course of Love is a novel that explores what happens after the birth of love, what it takes to maintain love, and what happens to our original ideals under the pressures of an average existence. You experience, along with Rabih and Kirsten, the first flush of infatuation, the effortlessness of falling into romantic love, and the course of life thereafter. Interwoven with their story and its challenges is an overlay of philosophy—an annotation and a guide to what we are reading.

This is a Romantic novel in the true sense, one interested in exploring how love can survive and thrive in the long term. The result is a sensory experience—fictional, philosophical, psychological—that urges us to identify deeply with these characters, and to reflect on his and her own experiences in love. Fresh, visceral, and utterly compelling, The Course of Love is a provocative and life-affirming novel for everyone who believes in love.

他不乏米蘭·昆德拉的批評深度，深具羅蘭·巴特爾的解構氣質；但，他比昆德拉有更立體的愛情思維，比巴特爾更熨帖戀人的愛情神經。他激活我們全新的閱讀體驗。

阿蘭·德波頓（Alain de Botton），英倫纔子型作傢，生於1969年，畢業於劍橋大學，現住倫敦。著有小說《愛情筆記》（1993）、《愛上浪漫》（1994）、《親吻與述說》（1995）及散文作品《擁抱逝水年華》（1997）、《哲學的慰藉》（2000）、《旅行的藝術》（2002）、《身份的焦慮》（2004）、《無聊的魅力》（2005）、《幸福的建築》（2007）、《工作頌歌》（2009）、《機場裏的小旅行》（2009）、《寫給無神論者》（2012）、《新聞的騷動》（2015）。他的作品已被譯成二十幾種文字。