SELECTED BY THE NEW YORK TIMES AS ONE OF THE 50 BEST MEMOIRS OF THE PAST 50 YEARS

A singular, deeply moving memoir of human connection in the wake of devastating loss, by the "prodigiously talented" (The New York Review of Books) Emmanuel Carrere.

In Sri Lanka, a tsunami sweeps a child out to sea, her grandfather helpless against the onrushing water. In France, a woman succumbs to cancer, leaving a hole in the lives of her loved ones. Present at both events is Emmanuel Carrere, who sets out to tell the story of two families shattered and ultimately restored. What he accomplishes is nothing short of a literary miracle: a heartrending narrative of endless love, a meditation on courage and decency in the face of adversity, and an intimate and reverent look at the extraordinary beauty and nobility of ordinary lives. As he tells the stories of those touched by loss-most memorably, an unsentimental, one-legged judge who has made a career of fighting for France's most vulnerable-Carrere himself, a longtime chronicler of his own tormented psyche, unexpectedly finds consolation and fulfillment in immersing himself in the lives of others.