"Thirteen passengers are stranded at an airport. Tokyo, their destination, is covered in snow and all flights are cancelled. To pass the night they form a huddle by the silent baggage carousels and tell each other stories." "Robert De Niro's child, conceived in a laundromat, masters the transubstantiation of matter and turns it against his enemies; a Ukrainian merchant is led by a wingless bird back to a lost lover; a man who edits other people's memories has to confront his own past; a Chinese youth with amazing luck cuts men's hair and cleans their ears; an entrepreneur risks losing everything in his obsession with a doll; a mute Turkish girl is left all alone in the house of a German cartographer. Told by people on a journey, these are stories about lives in transit. Stories from the great cities - New York, Istanbul, Delhi, Lagos, Paris, Buenos Aires - that grow into a novel about the hopes and dreams and disappointments that connect people everywhere."--BOOK JACKET.