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It is 1989 and Naiko is working in the Undeliverable Mail Office, a cavernous space that resembles a giant, congested pawnshop. Immersed in things lost and missing, she searches for clues to match undeliverable mail with addresses, a job that allows her to achieve a semblance of order in a disorderly world. It is a shock, then, when Naiko’s co-worker Andrei, an enigmatic Romanian refugee who has become the unlikely object of Naiko’s fascination, suddenly vanishes.
Naiko’s shifting understanding of Andrei’s past becomes an opaque reflection of her own existence, and objects — from the pens hoarded by Naiko’s mother in her retirement home to the personal effects of Jewish women that Andrei’s grandmother sorts through at Birkenau — become touchstones for memories and meaning, loss and love.
Paperback: 336 pages
Publisher: Harper Collins Canada (Jan 17 2008)
ISBN: 978-0002008945nto Life between 1997–1999.
Copyright Kyo Maclear 2008