"There are some f***s for which a person would have their partner and children drown in a freezing sea."

Relentlessly honest and a ruthless, Intimacy begins with Jay preparing to leave his wife Susan and their two sons and slink away in the thick of the night after his young girlfriend Nina says to him, "If you want me, I’m here". In the rest of the pages he makes a case for why he leaves his marriage which for some critics appears like the same old tale of sexual infidelity and, for others, a "devastating and insightful portrait of how – for better or for worse – betrayal can become a form of self-renewal".

Kureishi, who began his career by writing pornography, was constantly hounded by relatives and people close to him as he used personal details of their lives in his novels. Intimacy was the most controversial in this regard, leading to an unpleasant public row with his former partner and the mother of two of his children.

The novel stands slim at 138 pages and its time span is roughly 24 hours. It was loosely adapted to a movie of the same title in 2001.

Published in 1998.