She has a tragic love affair which results in an abortion, he consorts with local whores. They meet in Manchuria, but come together too late, united only in tragedy.The theme has potential, but the period has been done before and better: by Amy Tan, for example. Shen doesn’t handle passion well, and the novel’s desultory sex adds little more than sensation to a melodramatic story Her intense lyricism amounts all too often to overkill. One can visualise the film version, though: directed by a Hollywood name, financed by multinational corporations, filmed in Hong Kong with a cast of diasporic stars.Aamer Hussein’s latest collection of stories is ‘Turquoise’ (Saqi Books).

His long association with the photographer continues with this wonderful new book. The Man, the Image and the World is timed to celebrate two linked events in Paris: a major retrospective at the Biblioth?e Nationale (until 27 July 2003), for which the book serves as a catalogue, and the opening of the Cartier-Bresson Foundation in Montparnasse. Besides preserving his legacy, the foundation will encourage and exhibit emerging photographic talents.
To call the book a “catalogue” does it an injustice. Its roster of distinguished contributors – from Jean Clair of the Mus?Picasso (with a beautifully written meditation on time in photography) to Serge Toubiana of Cahiers du Cin? (who writes valuably on Cartier-Bresson’s film work) – makes it the clearest introduction anyone could wish to the life and work of the man Pierre Assouline has called “the eye of the century”. Then there are the images, over 600 (many never before published). Photographs from all stages of his career touch on every aspect of human experience – a distillation of all our days.

That he finds compositional harmony in the bleakest of prospects reminds me of a remark he made in a letter to the screenwriter Ben Maddow: “There is no such thing as ugly, only disorganised.” Here, too, are many of his paintings and drawings; and a “family album” of personal memorabilia. and snapshots.Knowing Cartier-Bresson slightly, and having met him several times, I have a few snapshots of my own – although only in my memory. I recall the historian Eric Hobsbawm asking Cartier-Bresson if he knew the critic and novelist John Berger. “Yes,” he replied, “but I’m intimidated by his intellect.” Hobsbawm, amused, said he had never before heard a Frenchman admit the intellectual superiority of an Englishman, and Cartier-Bresson chuckled shyly, like a naughty schoolboy. On another occasion, Cartier-Bresson greeted Lord Snowdon by pointing towards a wall where sketches by Balthus and Giacometti were hanging. “The art is over there!” Snowdon stared straight ahead at Cartier-Bresson’s own photographs “These look pretty much like art to me,” he said. Cartier-Bresson shrugged, as if mystified by the compliment.These memories hint at the paradoxes in his nature.