In the last months before the events of 1985 which irrevocably altered the character of the place, Jan Morris was commissioned by an American magazine to write a series of letters from Hav. She remained there until the day of the invasion, and this book is the result. It is the first substantial portrait ever drawn of a city which enthralled such literary visitors as Marco Polo, Mark Twain, Tolstoy and D.H. Lawrence, but which remained, thanks to its political and geographical situation, virtually unknown to ordinary travellers.