"Jonathan Safran Foer confronts the traumas of our recent history. What he discovers is solace in that
most human quality, imagination." "Meet Oskar Schell, an inventor, Francophile, tambourine player, Shakespearean
actor, jeweler, and pacifist. He is nine years old. And he is on an urgent, secret search through the five boroughs
of New York. His mission is to find the lock that fits a mysterious key belonging to his father, who died in the
World Trade Center on 9/11." An inspired innocent, Oskar is alternately endearing, exasperating, and hilarious
as he careens from Central Park to Coney Island to Harlem on his search. Along the way he is always dreaming up
inventions to keep those he loves safe from harm. What about a birdseed shirt to let you fly away? What if you
could actually hear everyone's heartbeat? His goal is hopeful, but the past speaks a loud warning in stories of
those who've lost loved ones before. As Oskar roams New York, he encounters a motley assortment of humanity who
are all survivors in their own way. He befriends a 103-year-old war reporter, a tour guide who never leaves the
Empire State Building, and lovers enraptured or scorned. Ultimately, Oskar ends his journey where it began, at
his father's grave. But now he is accompanied by the silent stranger who has been renting the spare room of his
grandmother's apartment. They are there to dig up his father's empty coffin.