Exit West by Mohsin Hamid
In a xenophobic world not too different from our own, a refugee couple flee a war-torn country through magical doors that take them to safety. Their love endures, succumbs, then re-emerges decades later as something as simple and surprising as Hamid’s magical doors.
For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway
Yes, it’s written in 1940s macho-speak, but the love story between the American volunteer in the Spanish civil war and the Spanish rape survivor is tender, convincing and unromanticised. Their love could not have lasted but at least it was.
Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel García Márquez
Turning idealised love into a disease, Márquez gives us both a clever play on words and a fable about enduring love. We have the ending we want as the lovers are reunited in old age, yet Marquez deftly teases us for believing in a love that could weather all.