New York, NY: Norton (2005)

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 or love: a tale brimming with laughter, irony, passion, and soaring imaginative power.