In France, Mattie feels 20 again. In Poland, Magda revisits her impoverished family. In Uzbekistan, Diana lets a fellow tourist kiss her. In Germany, Lynn loses her luggage on the Düsseldorf train.   

 

The Hopeful Traveller is a collection of short stories about—and told by—single women who have put the past behind them but are still  looking for their anchor in the present.   It includes bitter-sweet accounts of the freedoms of postwar life, of foreign travel, of the rekindling of old friendships and of the search for new ones.   The stories speak of cosmopolitan, self-confident, well-heeled characters, in an era just before the birth of feminism, conventional in their expectations of men, always just a step away from displacement and alienation.   

 

Set variously in Paris, Kalisz, Samarkand, Hong Kong, Melbourne, Erfurt, Singapore and London, these stories, from a much-admired veteran writer, offer a teasing mix of realism and fantasy, wish-fulfilment and regret.   Some of these stories have appeared in translation in overseas annuals and collections.