Penguin Essentials: The History of Love

‘When they write my obituary. Tomorrow. Or the next day. It will say Leo Gursky is survived by an apartment full of shit.’

Leo Gursky is an old man living alone in New York. In Poland sixty years earlier he wrote a book called The History of Love, inspired by his lover Alma. But when they were parted by the war, circumstances ensured they could never be together again and Leo’s book was lost. If only he could find it. If only he wasn’t so alone.

Meanwhile, across the city, fourteen-year-old Alma Singer is trying to cure her mother’s loneliness. Thinking the answer may lie in the old book her mother is translating – called The History of Love – Alma sets out to find its author. She hopes to save her family but along the way she discovers that something bigger may be at stake . . .