This book is very weird but in a good way. Lina has survived an environmental catastrophe in China. She has lost her family in a flood. She carries three biographies from a series - the lives of Du Fu, a Chinese T'ang dynasty poet, of Baruch Spinoza, the Jewish Dutch philosopher and Hannah Arendt, a survivor of Nazi persecution. Their tales become entwined with that of Lina in a spellbinding narrative, that is utterly and completely human.
Two hours passed in this way. When night darkened the windows, he removed the lens from the lathe, as tenderly as if it were a baby kinglet. Everyone had gone home except Obissi, who was sorting tomorrow's orders. Baruch washed his equipment, set a paper cover over his work-in-progress and walked home. The hours of his life felt compressed, like the sky's horizon reflected in a cup of water. Clara Maria's voice was stuck in his head, her voice serenity itself: 'How can you wonder that your travels do you no good, when you carry yourself around with you? You are saddled with everything that drove you away.'
