The History of Love (2005) (edit title/settings)

Ridiculously Simplified Synopsis edit see section history

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Characters edit see section history

• Leo Gursky: An elderly man who is all alone, had written a book 60 years before
• Alma Singer: Fourteen year-old girl named after a character in The History of Love by Zvi Litvinoff
• Rosa: Zvi Litvinoff's wife
• Alma Mereminski: The love interest in Zvi Litvinoff's book The History of Love
• Alma: 15 year old girl who tried to find the origin of her name and learns about herself and love along the way
• Misha: A Russian immigrant who becomes Alma Singer's good friend and love interest.
• Bird: Alma Singer's brother, thinks he is the Messiah
• Zvi Litvinoff: The author of the book The History of Love written in Spanish and being translated by Singer
• Jacob Marcus: Requested a translation of The History of Love by Singer
• Isaac Moritz: Leo Gursky's son
• Uncle Julian: Alma Singer's uncle(her mother's brother)
• Bernard Mortiz: Isaac Mortiz's half brother
• Dr. Vishnubakat: Bird's psychologist
• David Singer: Alma's father who died when she was young

Quotes edit see section history

• “Sometime she subsists for days on water and air. Being the only known complex life-form to do this, she should have a species named after her.”

  Alma Singer

• “He picked my mother up on Friday nights while the other kibbutzniks lay on blankets under a giant movie screen on the grass, petting dogs and getting high. He drove her to the Dead Sea where they floated strangely.”

  Alma Singer

• “One day my father laughed and corrected me. Everything snapped into focus. It's one of those unforgettable moments that happen as a child, when you discover that all along the world has been betraying you.”

  Alma Singer

• “Even now, all possible feelings do not yet exist. There are still those that lie beyond our capacity and our imagination. From time to time, when a piece of music no one has ever written, or a painting no one has ever painted, or something else impossible to predict, fathom, or yet describe takes place, a new feeling enters the world. And then, for the millionth time in the history of feeling, the heart surges, and absorbs the impact.”

• “There was a time when it wasn't uncommon to use a piece of string to guide words that otherwise might falter on the way to their destinations. Shy people carried a little bundle of string in their pockets, but people considered loudmouths had no less need for it, since those used to being overheard by everyone were often at a loss for how to make themselves heard by someone. The physical distance between two people using a string was often small; sometime the smaller the distance, the greater the need for the string.”

• “The practise of attaching cups to the ends of the string came much later. Some say its is related to the irrepressible urge to press shells to our ears, to hear the still-surviving echo of the world's first expression. Others say it was started by a man who held the end of a string that was unraveled across the ocean by a girl who let for America.”

• “He died in a tree from which he wouldn't come down. "Come down!" they cried to him. "Come down! Come down!" Silence fill the night and the night filled the silence, while they waited for Kafka to speak. "I can't," he finally said, with a note of wistfulness. "Why?" they cried. Stars spilled across the black sky. "Because then you'll stop asking for me."”

  Franz Kafka Is Dead, by Leopold Gursky

• “Ladies and gentlemen. We are gathered here today to celebrate the mysteries of life. What? No, stone throwing is not allowed. Only flowers. Or money.”

  Leopold Gursky

• “He learned to live with the truth. Not to accept it, but to live with it. It was like living with an elephant. His room was tiny, and every morning he had to squeeze around the truth just to get to the bathroom. To reach the armoire to get a pair of underpants he had to crawl under the truth, praying it wouldn't choose that moment to sit on his face. At night, when he closed his eyes, he felt it looming above him.”

  Litvinoff

• “At the end, all that's left of you are your possessions. Perhaps that's why I've never been able to throw anything away. Perhaps that's why I hoarded the world: with the hope that when I died, the sum total of my things would suggest a life larger than the one I lived.”

  Leopold Gursky

• “Once upon a time there was a boy who loved a girl, and her laughter was a question he wanted to spend his whole life answering.”

• “A place belongs to anyone who has a use for it.”

  Bird

• Popular Highlights from Kindle Customers

• Once upon a time there was a boy who loved a girl, and her laughter was a question he wanted to spend his whole life answering.

  Highlighted by 48 Kindle customers

• Her kiss was a question he wanted to spend his whole life answering.

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• Holding hands, for example, is a way to remember how it feels to say nothing together. And at night, when it’s too dark to see, we find it necessary to gesture on each other’s bodies to make ourselves understood.

  Highlighted by 32 Kindle customers

• having a ­quarter-­of-­an-­inch of something you have a better chance of holding on to a certain feeling of the universe than if you pretended to be doing the whole sky. My mother did not choose a leaf or a head. She chose my father, and to hold on to a certain feeling, she sacrificed the world.

  Highlighted by 31 Kindle customers

• grateful for the world which purposefully puts divisions in place so that we can overcome them, feeling the joy of getting closer, even if deep down we can never forget the sadness of our insurmountable differences.

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• Litvinoff’s life was defined by a delight in the weight of the real; his friend’s by a rejection of reality, with its army of ­flat-­footed facts.

  Highlighted by 21 Kindle customers

• And then I thought: Perhaps that is what it means to be a father—to teach your child to live without you. If so, no one was a greater father than I.

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• there are two types of people in the world: those who prefer to be sad among others, and those who prefer to be sad alone.

  Highlighted by 18 Kindle customers

• “Because nothing makes me happier and nothing makes me sadder than you.”)

  Highlighted by 18 Kindle customers

• He learned to live with the truth. Not to accept it, but to live with it. It was like living with an elephant. His room was tiny, and every morning he had to squeeze around the truth just to get to the bathroom. To reach the armoire to get a pair of underpants he had to crawl under the truth, praying it wouldn’t choose that moment to sit on his face. At night, when he closed his eyes, he felt it looming above him.

  Highlighted by 15 Kindle customers

Setting & Locations edit see section history

• Slonim Poland: Alma, Bruno, and Leo grew up in Slonim
• Chile, So America: Where Zvi emigrated, met, and married Rosa
• Israel
• New York City
• Brooklyn
• Russia
• London
• Valparaiso: Zvi and Rosa lived there.

First Sentence edit see section history

Glossary edit see section history

• tzaddik: Righteous person

Authors & Contributors edit see section history

1. Nicole Krauss (Author)

Other Contributors:

1. Rob van der Veer (Translator) - Translated from English to Dutch
2. Pedro Serras Pereira (Translator)

First Edition edit see section history

Awards edit see section history

• BOMC's Best Literary Fiction Award (2005)
• Edward Lewis Wallant Award (2005)
• Prix du Meilleur Livre Étranger (2006: Novel)
• William Saroyan International Prize for Writing (2008: Fiction, Winner)
• Orange Prize for Fiction (Finalist, 2006)

Classification edit see section history

• Library of Congress: PS3611.R38 H57
• Dewey: 813.6

Notes for Parents edit see section history

Add a note to help parents select a book for a child.

Subjects edit see section history

• Books › Literature & Fiction › Literary
• Books › Literature & Fiction › Contemporary