Fugitive Pieces by Anne Michaels | PenguinRandomHouse.com

About Fugitive Pieces

A New York Times Notable Book of the Year
Winner of the Lannan Literary Fiction Award
Winner of the Guardian Fiction Award

In 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 Pieces is a triumphant work, a book that should not so much be read as it should be surrendered to.

About Fugitive Pieces

A New York Times Notable Book of the Year
Winner of the Lannan Literary Fiction Award
Winner of the Guardian Fiction Award

In 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 Pieces is a triumphant work, a book that should not so much be read as it should be surrendered to.

About Fugitive Pieces

Anne Michaels’ spellbinding début novel has quickly become one of the most beloved and talked-about books of the decade. As a young boy during the Second World War, Jakob Beer is rescued from the mud in Poland by an unlikely saviour, the scientist Athos Roussos, and he is taken to Greece, then, at war’s end, to Toronto. It is here that his loss gradually surfaces, as does the haunting question of his sister’s fate. Later in life, as a translator and a poet, and now with the glorious Michaela, Jakob meets Ben, a young professor whose own legacies of the war kindle within him a fascination with the older man and his writing. Fugitive Pieces is a work of rare vision that is at once lyrical, sensual, profound. With its vivid evocation of landscape and character, its unique excavation of memory and time, it is a wholly unforgettable novel that draws us into the lives of its characters with compassion and recognition.

Awards

Chapters/Books in Canada First Novel Award WINNER

Guardian First Book Award WINNER

Harold U. Ribalow Prize WINNER 1998

Orange Prize WINNER 1997

Orange Prize for Fiction WINNER 1997

Toronto Book Award WINNER

Trillium Book Award WINNER

Scotiabank Giller Prize FINALIST 1996

Praise

"Extraordinarily magical." –Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times

"Lovely…musical and magical…. Put this book alongside The English Patient." —Chicago Tribune

"Word by blessed word, it is a gorgeously written book: aflame with the subzero cold of history and the passions of emotional comprehension." —Boston Globe

"Fugitive Pieces deserves to become a classic." —San Francisco Chronicle

About Anne Michaels

ANNE MICHAELS is the author of the multiple prizewinner Fugitive Pieces, which was made into a major motion picture, and a second novel, The Winter Vault, which was a finalist for the Scotiabank Giller Prize, the Trillium Book Award, and the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize, and… More about Anne Michaels

About Anne Michaels

ANNE MICHAELS is the author of the multiple prizewinner Fugitive Pieces, which was made into a major motion picture, and a second novel, The Winter Vault, which was a finalist for the Scotiabank Giller Prize, the Trillium Book Award, and the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize, and… More about Anne Michaels

About Anne Michaels

ANNE MICHAELS is the author of the multiple prizewinner Fugitive Pieces, which was made into a major motion picture, and a second novel, The Winter Vault, which was a finalist for the Scotiabank Giller Prize, the Trillium Book Award, and the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize, and… More about Anne Michaels