André Aciman is back with Stowaways, a contemporary twist on Brief Encounter and a tender meditation on what might have been.

‘Maybe we love people because they won’t let us know them.’

A summer’s evening in Manhattan. Nothing – not cold drinks, not showers, not a stroll through the chilly aisles of an all-night drugstore – can undo the heat’s hold on the city. Julian is half watching the evening news, his partner filling the dishwasher. That’s when it arrives. An email with the subject line: ‘From Paul Axel’. An email about a dead man from Carol – a woman Julian has never met. Paul has left a message he’d like her to relay.

Emails are exchanged. Morning coffee at the Bryant Park Grill is agreed. Carol, fulfilling Paul’s final request, wonders how she will tell Julian of a life – and a love – he has no idea existed. A life, encased in a flash drive, containing multitudes...