A young woman stands in the crowded arrival hall of the Pointe-à-Pitre airport, holding the hand of an anxious boy. The woman is waiting. She has left a life behind, far away in France, and is waiting for a new one to begin, here and now, in the tropical paradise of Guadeloupe. "And Lazare?" the child asks. "Where is Lazare, Mama?" One tour group after another is welcomed with flowers. But Lazare does not come. Marie NDiaye's novel draws the reader into the pull of a mysterious foreign world.