Publisher's Synopsis
This book is a literary thriller about love, assassination, and identity politics. It is the story of Cyrus, a man without a country but with too many passports, a man desperately in love with Rachel whom he first meets as a teenager in a museum in Vienna.
Five years later he runs into Rachel on a bus in New York. She becmes torn between her strict, religious upbringing and her love for Cyrus. A chance photo by Cyrus leads to Rachel being framed for murder by the people she works for. The reader begins to suspect that Rachel is being manipulated. How much of her behavior with Cyrus is planned? How far will she go to prove her innocence and love--and remain alive? Cyrus's self is a question mark, his identity beyond his grasp, and his mind on a quest for meaning in his life. Cyrus flees the U.S. army draft to Paris, where in a world of social outcasts, glitterati, intellectuals, and simmering violence, his past overtakes him. Why does Rachel have to betray him? The authorities remain vague about what they suspect him. He must be lying about his life. It doesn't add up. Such a person can't exist. Is he under surveillance? Cyrus finds his answer one afternoon in a Paris metro station.
