A prismatic mind-bending epic about the splintering of a family into different worlds
Everyone had been survived into different futures and I would never see any of them again. I
could sense this. I would hear them in their separate rooms within their separate lives but I
would not be able to cross over to meet them. In Rooms for Vanishing the violence of war
has fractured the universe for the Altermans a Jewish family from Vienna. Moving across
decades and across the world the novel finds the Altermans alone in their separate futures
haunted by the loss of their loved ones each certain that they are the sole survivor of their
family. Sonja the daughter has gone in search of her husband who has disappeared into
London Fania the mother is confronted with her doppelgänger in the basement of a Montreal
hotel Moses the son is followed by the ghost of his best friend and finally Arnold the
father dares to believe that his long-lost daughter might be alive after he receives a message
from an Englishwoman claiming to be her. Spellbinding and profound Rooms for Vanishing is
a singular work that explores how—amid profound loss and the madness of grief—ghosts are made
momentarily real.
