Synopsis
From the Nobel laureate, author of Night, a searing new novel about a man whose life is shaped by his changing grasp of the horrors of the twentieth century.
Doriel, a European orphan transplanted to New York, carries with him a profound sense of desperation and loss. His mother, a resistance leader during World War II, survived the war but soon afterward died in a car crash with Doriel s father. His longing for his parents and their secrets haunt him, leaving him unable to experience the most basic joys in life. A gifted psychoanalyst helps bring him to a crossroads: to a shocking discovery about his mother s life and his own birth, and to the understanding that even the most intimate of wounds can be healed.
From the Compact Disc edition.
The Washington Post - Donna Rifkind
The book's style and themes will be familiar to those acquainted with his previous fiction…yet A Mad Desire to Dance shows the sensibility of a literary wanderer who has not finished searching for answers to his original anguished questions…The novel's grim satisfactions lie in a sense of shared responsibility between teller and listener, a confidential yet far-reaching partnership that began four decades ago with Night.