Hailed as one of the best short story writers of the 1990s, Josip Novakovich was praised by the New York Times for writing fiction that has "the crackle of authenticity, like the bite of breaking glass." An immigrant from the "old Yugoslavia" has a curious exchange with a beautiful Russian on a crowded Manhattan subway. Fluent in the many shades of meaning conveyed in the subtlest of gestures and the briefest of conversations, and gifted with a stinging sense of humour, Novakovich fashions take-charge tales of displacement that embody the fracturing of war and the misdirection of lust, the dream of sanctuary and the chasm of loneliness. - Booklist.