Winner of the 1948 John Llewellyn Rhys Prize
A poignant novel of forbidden love, The Wind Cannot Read is the story of Michael Quinn, an English airman, who falls in love with Sabby, his Japanese teacher, in India during the Second World War. "Enemies" in the eyes of his friends and fellow soldiers, they must keep their romance a secret in the face of great danger. And tragedy awaits them both when Quinn is sent behind enemy lines in Burma . . .
Cinematic in both its scope and depth of feeling, The Wind Cannot Read was made into a film starring Dirk Bogarde and Yoko Tani in 1958.
Richard Mason's descriptive powers are at their zenith in this touching wartime romance, which is a must-read for anyone who loved his timeless bestseller, The World of Suzie Wong.

Richard Mason was born near Manchester in 1919. He served in the RAF during the Second World War before taking a crash course in Japanese and becoming an interrogator of prisoners of war. His first novel, The Wind Cannot Read, which drew on these experiences, won the 1948 John Llewellyn Rhys Prize and was made into a film starring Dirk Bogarde. All of his following novels were also cinematised, most famously The World of Suzie Wong, about an artist's romance with a Hong Kong prostitute. His last novel, The Fever Tree, was published in 1962. Mason moved to Rome in the early 1970s and lived there until his death in 1997.