The illuminating national bestseller: "Vertiginously exciting…vibrantly imagined….[Krauss is] a prodigious talent."—Janet Maslin, New York Times

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.

妮可·克劳斯

一九七四年生于纽约，先后在斯坦福大学和牛津大学取得学位，主修文学与艺术史。自小博览群书，十九岁开始发表诗歌作品，获得众多赞誉。二00二年出版第一部长篇小说《走进房间的男人》（Man Walks into a Room），获选《洛杉矶时报》年度最佳好书，被《时尚先生》称为“全美最佳新秀作家”。二00五年《爱的历史》出版后，立刻登上英美各大畅销排行榜，被译成二十七种语言，入围二00六年英国橙子奖。

其丈夫为美国著名作家乔纳森·萨夫兰·福尔，全家现居住在纽约布鲁克林。