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Combining the infectious narration of Nick Hornby's Funny Girl, the philosophical lyricism of Roberto Bolao's The Savage Detectives, and the mesmerizing power of Anna North's The Life and Death of Sophie Stark, a breathtaking debut, brimming with youthful brio and irresistible humor, that chronicles a young man's friendship with a most peculiar artist.On a rooftop in Brooklyn on a spring night, a young intern and would-be writer, newly arrived from Copenhagen, meets the intriguing Ana Ivan. Clever and funny, with an air of mystery and melancholia, Ana is a performance artist, a mathematician, and a self-proclaimed time traveler. She is also bad luck, she confesses; she is from a cursed Romanian lineage.Before long, the intern finds himself seduced by Ana's enthralling stories - of her unlucky countrymen; of her parents' romance during the worst years of Nicolae Ceaucescu's dictatorship; of a Daylight Savings switchover gone horribly wrong.