THIS IS A SILK STOCKING of a novel: fragile, light, of little practical purpose - and yet possessed of surprising tensile strength. De Bernières' mellifluent, clear prose slips through the reader's mind with efficient ease, and even at its most dramatically jarring, you never need to come up for air. This is de Bernières' skill, and it is a considerable one. The world is full of ponderous, self-important novelists; making it look this simple is a real art.

At its core, this is a novel about human sadness. It is the story of a failed, uncertain love affair, a relationship unconsummated and founded entirely on the pain, insecurity and damaged personalities of the two protagonists. Each feeds the other's flaws; it is the worst kind of love affair - and one that the reader knows is doomed from the start. But there is another significant dimension to the action: the culture clash between East and West.

Representing Britain in all its mediocrity is Chris, a travelling salesman in the grip of a midlife crisis. He is married to a woman he rather nastily refers to as the “Great White Loaf”, adding that she has skimmed milk in her veins. Like most men of his age and stage he has an almost Olympian ability to feel sorry for himself. It's a quality that does not endear him to the female reader, especially when he uses his wife as an excuse to seek out the services of a prostitute.

It is in this manner that he meets Roza, the Yugoslavian object of his affections. At once dangerous and vulnerable, Roza perfectly encapsulates Chris's need to feel both adventurous and in control. But it is she who takes control of him, and instead of sleeping with her he ends up giving her a lift home.

Their love affair develops over a series of clandestine (and platonic) meetings in her downtrodden digs in Archway, during which she talks while he listens (a neat reversal of the traditional relationship between prostitute and punter). Her stories are sometimes sad, always provocative. The reader is encouraged, at times, to suspect that they may not all be true.

What emerges is the stark contrast between Chris's dreary existence and Roza's tough, romantic upbringing as the daughter of a decorated partisan in Tito's Yugoslavia. Everything about the pair is designed to highlight their difference: the fact that she smokes heavily while he thinks tobacco manufacturers should be tried as murderers; her casual Balkan racism (Albanians are all savages, Croats murderers) and his tentative political correctness; her disregard for housework, his middle-class mania for order.

As she unravels her life story (incest, broken heart, disillusionment, rape, prostitution) he becomes increasingly mesmerised by this fallen angel. That hoary old chestnut, the Madonna/whore complex, comes into play, and Chris becomes a man torn apart by his desires: on the one hand he desperately wants to save her; on the other he can't wait for them to do the wild thing.

At the back of his mind is always money: her stated price is £500, and he goes about amassing this sum, keeping it in a brown envelope in his jacket pocket. But his true fantasy is not that she will finally yield her charms to him in return for cash - but that she will do so of her own free will. Like so many men before (and after) him, he tries to escape his sexual straitjacket by dressing his lust up as love.

This is just one of the sexual clichés that abound in the book - but all are valid. In particular, de Bernières explores with accurate insight the allure of the unreconstructed Eastern European woman to the downtrodden Western man.

A Partisan's Daughter is set in the 1970s, at a time when women's lib was, quite reasonably, blowing holes in the orthodoxy of things. Roza's reassuring ability (not to say willingness) to cook, her desire to please, her inescapable vulnerability, are like water in the desert to a man such as Chris.

In the 30 or so years that have passed, this sense of injustice that many Western males feel has not necessarily improved. Most are delighted to be sharing their lives with successful, fulfilled females; but some find the situation unsatisfactory, as though they had been cheated out of their chromosomal rights. For these men, there is something irresistible about a female who doesn't expect a man to locate her G-spot, or long to be chairman of the board.

Emasculated and exasperated by pushy, demanding Western women, the Roza prototype has its appeal, the perfect Stepford Wife fantasy of the female unspoilt by the expectations of feminism. All Roza wants is the love of a good man - and what's not to like about that?

Chris, of course, is not a good man and Roza (or indeed her real-life sisters) is not that straightforward. As a study in frustration, both sexual and romantic, A Partisan's Daughter is gripping. Unless you happen to be a complete ingénue in matters of life and love, it probably won't tell you anything you don't already know about the human condition - especially since, in the final resolution, de Bernières falls into his own trap by romanticising the distinctly unromantic profession of prostitution.

What no one can deny, however, is that he lights the reader's way on this uncertain journey with a storytelling flair that does, ultimately, make the game worth the candle.

The Partisan's Daughter by Louis de Bernières
Harvill Secker, £16.99

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