The new Italian evening class at Mountainview School in Dublin is like hundreds of others starting up all over the city -but this one has its own special quality... the hopes and dreams of so many people are tied up in the twice-weekly lessons.

Evening Class interweaves the stories of eight people who decide to follow their dream... from Aidan Dunne, waiting all his life for the promotion which never came, and Signora, who followed the man she loved to a far country then waited twenty-three years for him, to Laddy, the hotel porter, with a touching dream in his heart. They come to the evening class, but they all learn far more than they ever bargained for and, by the time they are ready to set off on the promised trip to Italy at the end of the year, everyone's destiny has changed utterly.

Maeve Binchy's great gift as a novelist is to see that in every life, no matter how superficially humdrum, lie drama, tragedy, and often the intolerable burden of secrets long hidden. In this story she shows how a simple decision -to join an evening class - brings these into the transforming light of day.

MAEVE BINCHY was born in County Dublin and was educated at the Holy Child convent in Killiney and at University College, Dublin. After a spell as a teacher in various girls' schools, she joined the Irish Times, for which she wrote feature articles and columns. Her first novel, Light a Penny Candle, was published in 1982, and since then she has written more than a dozen novels and short story collections, each one of them bestsellers. Several have been adapted for cinema and television, most notably Circle of Friends. I in 1995 Maeve Binchy was awarded the Lifetime Achievement award at the British Book Awards in 1999. She is married to the writer and broadcaster Gordon Snell.

KATE BINCHY has worked in every sort of theatre from West End to fringe, on television (Big Bad World, Screen Two, Father Ted, Casualty and Fair City), in over five hundred radio plays, and in films (Mrs Dalloway and The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne). She is Maeve's cousin.