Shells From The Nova

When i was in High School i read a science fiction book that i cannot remember the name of.

Pretty much all i did in High School was read science fiction.  I would often bring two books to school with me because i would finish one each day.  Many of those books were on my bookshelves until a big garage sale a few years ago.

However there is one book that i think about fairly often that i cannot remember the name or the author.  Maybe someone can help.  I don't really remember the story, i remember the setting.

The setting was a trading planet where people came to meet up, lots of races mixing, and lots of humans from all over the galaxy on the planet.  It was a dark and dismal place. No one was there because of the place rather they were there because they needed to be; It was a big active port that no one really wanted to spend time at. 

The unusual thing about this planet was it's star.  At regular intervals (2 years? I don't remember exactly.) the star would under go a Nova like explosion and would send a layer of energy and particles out.  This layer would settle, invisibly, on the planet and cover everything and every one on the planet.  It didn't hurt anyone, but once a layer of the dust settled on you -- you could never leave the planet.  So before every Nova there was a scramble to get off planet.  Of course the protagonist was caught by a serious of unfortunate events on planet during a Nova.

Once you were stuck on planet, you started accumulating layers of Nova dust.  While the dust was invisible, it slightly distorted your senses.  However as more layers accumulated, that slight distortion became greater. 

Each layer of dust that accumulated on you made it harder and harder to communicate with people with no layer or a significantly different number of layers from you.  Eventually, "oldtimers" were invisible to newcomers.

If you know the name or author of this book, please leave a comment!