Contango is a book by James Hilton. Hilton was an English novelist and playwriter. Excerpt: "Gathergood was forty-nine, and had spent a quarter of a century in
various parts of the East. He had never married, nor had rumour
ever associated him with a woman, white or coloured. He was aware
that women did not particularly care for him, and he had never
found their indifference hard to endure. With men, individual
men, he had sometimes wished he could become more intimate, but
even the wish for this had rarely been enough to make for keen
disappointment."