Youth's narrator, a student in 1950s South Africa, has long been plotting an escape from his native country. Studying mathematics, reading poetry, saving money, he treis to ensure that when he arrives in the real world he will be prepared to experience life to its full intensity, and transform itinto art. Arriving at last in London, however, he finds neither poetry nor romance. Instead he succumbs to the monotomy of life as a computer programmer, from which random, loveless affairs offer no relief. Devoid of inspiration, he stops writing and begins a dark pilgrimage in which he is ciontinually tested and continually found wanting.
