A "stealthily original" ( The New York Times Book Review ) debut novel of two people who find each other when they least expect it in a city haunted by history.BR Walter Baum has one of the most famous voices in Germany. A former television star, he's been dubbing Tom Cruise's lines into German for fifteen years. Now he finds himself nearing forty, alone and adrift. In the apartment below is Hope, a young American woman, isolated in a lonely city. When they finally meet in the elevator of the building they share, what transpires is "an essential love story for our confused and difficult times."(Gary Shteyngart, author of Absurdistan )