Samson Greene, a popular professor at Columbia, has been missing for eight days when he is found wandering in the Nevada desert, 'ragged as a crow' and with no idea who he is. He is rushed to hospital where doctors save his life by removing a brain tumour, but all his memories after the age of 12 have been permanently lost.
When his wife, Anna, comes to bring him home, she finds a man who remembers nothing, not even his own name. Now, as he looks around the beautiful apartment he apparently shares with his wife and which is filled with all the souvenirs of a life well lived, Samson feels nothing more than vague admiration.
Nicole Krauss tells the story of a man suddenly liberated from the life he has made, disconnected from the people who have defined him. Withdrawing from a wife he has no memory of loving, Samson plunges weightless into the future. 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.
Author: Man Walks into a Room
ISBN: 9780141021157
Format: Paperback
Pages: 256
Dimensions: 128 x 192