PEN/Faulkner Award - Nomination (1991)
"Sparklingly diverse." (Wall Street Journal)

After squandering an unexpected inheritance, Jim Nashe hires a hitchhiker on the highway named Jack Pozzi, a young card cheat who plans to outwit two millionaires.

However, Jim and Jack's plan backfires: they have to work off the lost amount, the terms of which are fixed in a contract by the millionaires. The work is a Kafkaesque, completely meaningless undertaking: a wall is built from the remains of an Irish castle. As time passes, the debt mounts, Jim and Jack grow angrier and try to find a way out of their absurd servitude.

Paul Auster's story is about the plasticity of oppression and the power of unfair deals, a world where chance not only plays a role, but in fact takes over the only starring role.