J.R. Ackerley's German shepherd Tulip was s kittish, possessive, and wild, but he loved her deeply. This clear-eyed and wonderin g, humorous and moving book, described by Christopher Isherwood as one of the greatest masterpieces of animal literature, is her biography, a work of faultless an d respectful observation that transcends the seeming modesty of its subject. In tell ing the story of his beloved Tulip, Ackerley has written a book that is a profound a nd subtle meditation on the strangeness abiding at the heart of all re lationships.

This frank and often very funny account of the ways of dog and man was recently sing led out by The New Yorker as one of the bona-fide dog-lit classics.