Radically illicit … Flaubert was tried for offences against morality and religion for his now-classic novel Madame Bovary. Photograph: The Lowry/PFP
The coup de foudre. The brief encounter. The dangerous liaison. Our usual descriptions fascinate briefly, then fizzle out. They don't reveal enough. In fiction, as in life, I'm drawn to questions of who and how we love, the losses we fear, and what we'll risk – absurdly or boldly – to feel alive under the skin.
For most of us, the thrill of a story about an infidelity is less about sex than it is about intimacy, that magnetic line of connection between two bodies and their secret selves. Intimacy shared with another person is often the first real betrayal to any union, and the first plunge out of one's depth.
In fiction, characters misjudge the depth of the fall. Others rush headlong into the stuff of life. As they do, they're laid bare – literally (almost certainly) and metaphorically (always). We see what it is to be human: to yearn, to feel joy, to suffer and to see the world transformed.
1. Madame Bovary by Gustav Flaubert
Who can forget Emma and Léon's furious cab ride
through the streets of Rouen, their illicit passion concealed from view? In
1857, following publication, the Second Empire tried Flaubert for offences to
morality and religion. He was acquitted, and the novel became an immediate
bestseller. From the distance of the 21st century, it is easy to lose sight of
just how radical Madame Bovary was when it first appeared, not only in its new
"objective" style of prose, but also in its refusal to either
romanticise or sermonise. Flaubert confessed to weeping at times as he wrote;
he sympathised so much with Emma in her final days that he felt physically ill.
