June 2005 First Editions Club Pick

New York, NY: Norton (2005)

First Edition. Signed.

Fine in dust jacket.

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, Spell-binding skill. Nicole Krauss gradually draws together their stories. Thus 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.