A funny and intensely moving pilgrimage into the dark heart of the twentieth century. Empathy is a luxury few people can afford. Malcolm, an ageing hairdresser whose love for his Alzheimers-victim lover is fading fast, is too oppressed by his domestic life to notice the world outside. Alison, his colleague, is blithely innocent: she believes that hairdressing brings happiness. Both are in their own way blind, until a colleague's neo-fascist murder unites them on an emotional journey - to Auschwitz, where they are forced to confront the suffering of others, and to face the possibility of life. Unexpectedly witty, devastatingly frank, this is a brave and extraordinarily enjoyable novel by an author hailed as one of Canada's best new writers.