From the Oscar-nominated screenwriter ( When Harry Met Sally) and successful director (S leepless in Seattle), Nora Ephron comes a bittersweet autobiographical book about love and loss. Published as part of a beautifully designed series to mark the fortieth anniversary of the Virago Modern Classics.

'Heartburn is as hilarious as it is heartbreaking and as brittle (very) as it is steely (even more)' India Knight

'Heartburn is the perfect, bittersweet, sobbingly funny, all-too-true confessional novel. There is not a wrong word - about food, marriage, life, love, loss - and all rings true and makes you laugh. Who could ask for anything more?' Nigella Lawson

'Nora Ephron can write about anything better than anybody else can write about anything' New York Times

A BESTSELLING NOVEL AND MAJOR FILM STARRING MERYL STREEP AND JACK NICHOLSON

'I have bought more copies of this book to give to people, in a frenzy of enthusiasm, than any other . . . Heartburn is the perfect, bittersweet, sobbingly funny, all-too-true confessional novel' NIGELLA LAWSON

'A perfect example of Ephron's gift for turning tragedy into comedy' PAULA HAWKINS, THE GIRL ON THE TRAIN

'She is wit without cynicism, the ultimate romantic' GAIL COLLINS, NEW YORK TIMES

Seven months into her pregnancy, Rachel discovers that her husband is in love with another woman. The fact that this woman has a 'neck as long as an arm and a nose as long as a thumb' is no consolation. Food sometimes is, though, since Rachel is a cookery writer, and between trying to win Mark back and wishing him dead, she offers us some of her favourite recipes. Heartburn is a roller coaster of love, betrayal, loss and most satisfyingly revenge.

This is Nora Ephron's (screenwriter of When Harry Met Sally and Sleepless in Seattle) roman à clef: 'I always thought during the pain of the marriage that one day it would make a funny book,' she once said - And it is!

Books included in the VMC fortieth anniversary series include: Frost in May by Antonia White; The Collected Stories of Grace Paley; Fire from Heaven by Mary Renault; The Magic Toyshop by Angela Carter; The Weather in the Streets by Rosamond Lehmann; Deep Water by Patricia Highsmith; The Return of the Soldier by Rebecca West; Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston; Heartburn by Nora Ephron; The Dud Avocado by Elaine Dundy; Memento Mori by Muriel Spark; A View of the Harbour by Elizabeth Taylor; and Faces in the Water by Janet Frame