The Course of Love is a playful, wise, and profoundly moving novel from the internationally bestselling author Alain de Botton. This story tracks the beautifully complicated arc of a romantic partnership.

We all know the headiness and excitement of the early days of love. But what comes after? In Edinburgh, a couple, Rabih and Kirsten, fall in love. They get married, they have children—but no long-term relationship is as simple as "happily ever after." The Course of Love explores what happens after the birth of love, what it takes to maintain love, and what happens to our original ideals under the pressures of an average existence.

Experience, along with Rabih and Kirsten, the first flush of infatuation, the effortlessness of falling into romantic love, and the course of life thereafter. Interwoven with their story and its challenges is an overlay of philosophy—an annotation and a guide to what we are reading. This is a romantic novel in the true sense, one interested in exploring how love can survive and thrive in the long term.

The result is a sensory experience—fictional, philosophical, psychological—that urges us to identify deeply with these characters and to reflect on our own experiences in love. Fresh, visceral, and utterly compelling, The Course of Love is a provocative and life-affirming novel for everyone who believes in love.

Pedro, who has been an orphan since childhood, finds himself in Ávila for his education. He is placed in the somber household of Don Mateo Lesmes, who instills in him the belief that to be happy, one must avoid all connections to the world, any emotion or affection.

Only the vitality of youth can enable him to overcome this inculcated pessimism. However, events seem to force him to remember what he was taught...