Annotation
ANew York TimesNotable Book of the YearWinner of the Lannan Literary Fiction AwardWinner of the Guardian Fiction AwardIn 1940 a boy bursts from the mud of a war-torn Polish city, where he has buried himself to hide from the soldiers who murdered his family. His name is Jakob Beer. He is only seven years old. And although by all rights he should have shared the fate of the other Jews in his village, he has not only survived but been rescued by a Greek geologist, who does not recognize the boy as human until he begins to cry. With this electrifying image, Anne Michaels ushers us into her rapturously acclaimed novel of loss, memory, history, and redemption.As Michaels follows Jakob across two continents, she lets us witness his transformation from a half-wild casualty of the Holocaust to an artist who extracts meaning from its abyss. Filled with mysterious symmetries and rendered in heart-stopping prose,Fugitive Piecesis a triumphant work, a book that should not so much be read as it should be surrendered to.
Awards
1997 New York Times Notable Books of the Year
1997 Amazon.ca/Books in Canada First Novel Award
1997 Guardian First Book Award
1996 Jewish Book Award
1997 Orange Prize for Fiction
1997 Toronto Book Awards
Characters
| Name | Beer, Jakob |
| Gender | Male |
| Occupations | Poet |
| Translator | |
| Traits | Jewish |
| Polish | |
| Immigrant | |
| Name | Roussos, Athos |
| Gender | Male |
| Occupations | Geologist |
| Professor | |
| Traits | Greek |
| Immigrant | |
| Name | Ben |
| Gender | Male |
| Occupation | Professor |
| Trait | Jewish |
| Genre | Sociological Diary Literary Fiction |
| Topics | World War II Holocaust survivors Children of Holocaust survivors Memories Immigrants |
| Setting | Poland Greece Toronto, Ontario |