Love Virtually

Love Virtually is a thoroughly modern epistolary novel with a difference: its protagonists - Emmi Rothner and Leo Leike - communicate exclusively by e-mail. (Who writes letters anymore?)

The European answer to You've got Mail.

Two million copies sold in Germany to date. And bought by thirty-five publishers around the world, Love Virtually by Austrian novelist Daniel Glattauer, is well on the way to becoming a global publishing phenomenon.

They "meet" when Emmi mistakenly sends an e-mail to Leo's inbox. A romance ensues that allows them to live out a shared secret life far removed from their day-to-day existences. But to what extent does it rely on fantasy and escapism, and will it survive a real-life meeting?

The problem is...Emmi (a modern Madame Bovary) is married....

Have email, Facebook, texting and the like created a generation of isolated young people who prefer to communicate remotely - who may be in fact afraid to engage in face to face contact to find love? Is it possible to fall in love with someone you've never met? Does a virtual affair 'count' as adultery? What are the implications of the fact that we can pretend to be anyone in cyberspace?

Adapted by Eileen Horne.

Produced by Clive Brill
A Pacificus Production for BBC Radio 4.