Meet William. He’s twenty-two. He’s highly intelligent. He’s an acerbic critic of Australian suburban life. And he’s lost. Chafing against his rural-Aussie background, William sees a university career in Thailand as his intellectual salvation, but he just can’t seem to get it together.

When he bumps into a childhood friend, Deliria, now a scorchingly attractive eighteen-year-old music student, she reveals a secret: she’s a compulsive shoplifter. Of course, he’s now completely smitten. Outclassed and intimidated, William tries to win her over by aiding and abetting her in a succession of minor thefts, and saving her life whenever things go awry.

Overflowing with the riotous immediacy of desire, Deliria is a comic-serious exploration of an educated young man’s quest to find his way in the world. A love song to Deliria, Thailand and twelfth-century French poetry, it proves that literary cultivation, savoir faire, bravery, sexual obsession, moral laxity and complete stupidity can exist in the one person.