Written in the first person, these stories are designed to be read in bed just before you go to sleep. The way to enjoy this book is to follow the author’s intentions: read one letter each night, put in your bookmark, firmly resist the temptation to turn the page and read the next one, switch off the bedside light and go to sleep. That way you have nighttime reading - hence the book’s title - for a month, more or less, and at quiet moments during the course of each day you can, if you so fancy, speculate about what’ll be on the reading menu tonight: which country you’ll be transported to, and whether he’ll be telling you about something which happened to him last year or half a century ago. To read it straight through would be the equivalent of ordering a three-course meal of, say, tomato soup, poached salmon with a side salad followed by chocolate fudge cake with hot sauce - and then putting them all on the same plate and eating the mixture with a spoon. Of course, it’s a free country. But courses are served separately so that different flavours may be enjoyed. If you’re now sufficiently intrigued, turn to page one and the Introduction.
