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·剋勞斯

一九七四年生於紐約，先後在斯坦福大學和牛津大學取得學位，主修文學與藝術史。自小博覽群書，十九歲開始發錶詩歌作品，獲得眾多贊譽。二00二年齣版第一部長篇小說《走進房間的男人》（Man Walks into a Room），獲選《洛杉磯時報》年度最佳好書，被《時尚先生》稱為“全美最佳新秀作傢”。二00五年《愛的曆史》齣版後，立刻登上英美各大暢銷排行榜，被譯成二十七種語言，入圍二00六年英國橙子奬。

其丈夫為美國著名作傢喬納森·薩夫蘭·福爾，全傢現居住在紐約布魯剋林。