Nine-year-old Oskar, a genius in his own unique way, is a New Yorker who loves inventing extraordinary devices. He invents birdseed shirts to be carried through the air by birds in case of an emergency, and a network of tubes connected to the pillows of every bed in New York to collect the tears of anyone crying before going to sleep, pouring them into the Central Park lake to show the daily level of suffering in his city. Oskar happens to cry into his pillow, too, ever since his father—his partner in so many games and inventions—died in the Twin Towers attack.

One day, not entirely by chance, inside a blue vase found in his father's closet, he discovers an envelope containing a key. Written on the back of the envelope is the word "Black." Which lock does that key open? And if Black is a name, who is Black? To find out, Oskar intends to knock on the door of every Mr. and Mrs. Black in the city: perhaps one of them knows something, a secret that can make him feel closer to his father. And even if his journey through the boroughs of New York won't bring back the person who is gone forever, it may offer him other gifts; it will certainly return to him, unexpectedly, a distant past that shattered the lives of his paternal grandparents and an entire generation: the past of a Europe devastated by World War II.

Nearly four years after the attack on the World Trade Center, one of the youngest and most promising American writers offers us his 9/11 novel. The story of this exceptional young boy and his family will make readers smile, weep, laugh, and reflect. It will make every reader feel part of a pain that goes far beyond the tragedy of Manhattan: it is the pain of all civilian victims of conflict, of all cities under attack, and of all lovers separated forever by war.