The acclaimed novelist and Nobel laureate returns to the subjects that have brought him the widest critical and commercial success, in an impassioned and deeply moving new novel about the legacy of the Holocaust and the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the power of memory, and the desire for resolution. It's 1975, and Shaltiel Feigenberg--beloved husband, and professional storyteller and writer--has been taken hostage: abducted from his home in Brooklyn, blindfolded, and tied to a chair in a dark basement. His captors, an Arab and an Italian, don't explain why the innocent Shaltiel has been chosen--just that his life will be bartered for the freedom of three Palestinian prisoners. As his days of waiting commence, Shaltiel resorts to what he does best, telling stories to himself and to the men who hold his fate in their hands. A Communist brother, a childhood spent hiding from the Nazis in a cellar, the kindness of liberating Russian soldiers, the unrest of the 1960s--these are the memories that unfold in Shaltiel's captivity, as the outside world breathlessly follows his disappearance and the police move toward a final confrontation with his captors.