He also describes his sexual exploits, devoting dozens of pages to one erotic challenge that combined uninhibited lust with high-wire audacity: a thwarted love affair, during a leftist press junket to North Korea in 1958, with a Pyongyang nurse.

NEWYORKER: Witness

The timid 1940s had tragic films with the hero and heroine thwarted in the path of love and dying singly or together while singing memorable songs.

BBC: How Bollywood mirrors Indian realities

It tells the peculiar love story of Benjamin and Daisy, whose romance is constantly thwarted by the fact that Benjamin's body almost never matches up with his chronological age.

NPR: In 'Benjamin Button,' A Curiously Chilly Passion