The Lost and Found, and Other Stories

As its title suggests, this collection is a sort of human list and found department. It is peopled with odd, vivid characters, often alone and displaced, immigrants from Turkey, Algeria, Egypt, Chile or lost souls in their own homeland, wanderers in whose world the miraculous is ever lurking, always possible. Many live in Paris —a dilapidated, largely unseen Paris of sweatshops and dingy hotels. Some have left their countries, like the wily Miss Carmen, to see what could be had; others, like the clubfooted Sliman, are driven by spiritual desire. For all of them, the experience of exile, real or imagined, is a catalyst to liberation—a liberation described by Marsella with compassion and a touch of the mystical.