Each of the nine stories in this book is an imaginative inquiry into something hidden or disguised, which can be uncovered not by reason but only by feeling and intuition. All of Tabucchi's characters struggle to find routes of escape from a present that is hard to bear, and from places in which political events have had deeply personal ramifications for their own lives. "Tabucchi's work has an almost palpable sympathy for the oppressed." — The New York Times A pleasure for fans of modern European literature.