Three Chinese Poets

Mrs Tay gave me a book yesterday, a book she had bought for me in New York sometime last year, and which she had been carrying around, from city to city for six months, because we kept missing each other. I'd thought of sending a courier but that seemed pompous, and impersonal, and so, finally yesterday we met. It's a slim, elegant sliver of a book, Three Chinese Poets, a translation of a collection of Tang poems by Wang Wei, Li Bai, and Du Fu, by the novelist Vikram Seth. The book is like Mrs Tay, very slim, refined, pared-down, articulate and fascinating on every level.

Even her diamonds didn't look vulgar.