The History of Love

A Novel

2 June 2006

Territory Rights — Worldwide including Canada, but excluding the British Commonwealth.

Description

ONE OF THE MOST LOVED NOVELS OF THE DECADE.

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 taps his radiator each evening to let his upstairs neighbor know he’s still alive. But it wasn’t always like this: in the Polish village of his youth, he fell in love and wrote a book…Sixty years later and half a world away, fourteen-year-old Alma, who was named after a character in that book, undertakes an adventure to find her namesake and save her family. With virtuosic skill and soaring imaginative power, Nicole Krauss gradually draws these stories together toward a climax of "extraordinary depth and beauty" (Newsday).

Reviews

"Vertiginously exciting…Beyond the vigorous whiplash that keeps The History of Love moving (and keeps its reader off balance until a stunning finale), this novel is tightly packed with ingenious asides…Even at their most oddball, these flourishes reflect the deep, surprising wisdom that gives this novel its ultimate heft." — Janet Maslin, New York Times

"At least as heartbreaking as it is hilarious." — Washington Post

"Krauss writes like an angel." — Guardian

"One of the most passionate vindications of the written word in recent fiction. It takes one’s breath away." — Spectator

"It’s the sort of book that makes life bearable after all." — Miami Herald

"A significant novel, genuinely one of the year’s best. Emotionally wrenching yet intellectually rigorous, idea-driven but with indelible characters and true suspense." — New York

"Big, bold, twist-your-heart sad, kick-your-heels joyful—Nicole Krauss's brilliant novel is as deep and multifaceted as love itself." — Marie Claire

"It restores your faith in fiction. It restores all sorts of faith." — Ali Smith

"Nicole Krauss's gripping new voice doesn't work its way into the pantheon of American voices: it literally walks straight up to them and asks them to move over." — Andre Aciman