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A long-lost book reappears, mysteriously
connecting an old man searching for his son and a girl seeking
a cure for her widowed mother's loneliness.
Leo Gursky is just about surviving, tapping his radiator each
evening to let his upstairs neighbor know he's still alive.
But life wasn't always like this: sixty years ago, in the
Polish village where he was born, Leo fell in love and wrote
a book. And though Leo doesn't know it, that book survived,
inspiring fabulous circumstances, even love. Fourteen-year-old
Alma was named after a character in that very book. And although
she has her hands full—keeping track of her brother,
Bird (who thinks he might be the Messiah), and taking copious
notes on How to Survive in the Wild—she undertakes an
adventure to find her namesake and save her family. With consummate,
spellbinding skill, Nicole Krauss gradually draws together
their stories.
This extraordinary book was inspired by the author's four
grandparents and by a pantheon of authors whose work is haunted
by loss—Bruno Schulz, Franz Kafka, Isaac Babel, and more.
It is truly a history of love: a tale brimming with laughter,
irony, passion, and soaring imaginative power.
Nicole Krauss is the author of the
novel Man Walks into a Room. Her work has appeared
most recently in The New Yorker. She lives in Brooklyn,
New York.
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