Krauss, Nicole

An enormous desk, once the property of a young poet who was kidnapped by Pinochet's secret police, becomes an inspiration and an obsession to the people whose lives it touches.

Samson Greene, a young and popular professor at Columbia, is found wandering in the Nevada desert. When his wife, Anna, comes to bring him home, she finds a man who remembers nothing, not even his own name. The removal of a small brain tumor saves his life, but his memories beyond the age of twelve are permanently lost. Here is the story of a keenly intelligent, sensitive man returned to a life in which everything is strange and new. An emigrant from his own life, set free from all that once defined him, Samson Greene believes he has nothing left to lose. So, when a charismatic scientist asks him to participate in a bold experiment, he agrees. Launched into a turbulent journey that takes him to the furthest extremes of solitude and intimacy, what he gains is nothing short of the revelation of what it means to be human.

Presents a narrative about an aged author who flees Nazi-occupied Poland, leaving his unpublished manuscript behind and a teenage girl in New York who was named after the heroine in Leo's book, which was published under a different man's name.

Presents a narrative about an aged author who flees Nazi-occupied Poland leaving his unpublished manuscript behind and a teenage girl in New York who was named after the heroine in Leo's book which was published under a different man's name.