Fugitive Pieces is poet Anne Michaels’ first novel. It is the author’s most famous book and, it has won many awards and was translated into many languages. After reading it, I understood why it has won many awards and why it is still so popular. The author demonstrates in her book that a novel can be written without killing the poet inside.
Fugitive Pieces begins in a Polish city devastated by war in 1940. A Greek geologist, Athos, rescues seven-year-old Jacob Beer, who lost his entire family. As you can imagine, the lives of these two entirely change. Jacop’s growth, that beautiful Greek island, our saviour Athos and Toronto are so beautifully written that I did not want to break away from the book and return to real life. In the last part of the book, we leave Jacop and Athos and listen to Ben. Ben (Jacop’s son), on the other hand, goes back to that beautiful Greek island in pursuit of his past, and the book flows fast towards the end. The narrative is magical, and the author is one of a kind. Must be on everyone’s bookshelves.
About the book: Fugitive Pieces
Athos and I stood together on deck and looked across the water at the bright city. From this distance no one would guess the turmoil that had torn apart Greece … The sea began to darken, and Athens, glowing in the distance, however seemed to float on the horizon like a bright ship.
Jakob Beer is seven years old when Athos rescues him from the ruins of a buried village in Nazi-occupied Poland. Also he is the only one of his family to have survived the invasion. Adopted by his saviour, the Greek geologist Athos, Jakob must steel himself to excavate the horrors of his own history.
In summary novel of astounding beauty and wisdom, Fugitive Pieces is a profound meditation on the resilience of the human spirit and love’s ability to restore even the most damaged of hearts.
About the author: Anne Michaels
Anne Michaels is a Canadian poet and novelist whose work has been translated and published in over 45 countries. Her books have garnered dozens of international awards including the Orange Prize, the Guardian Fiction Prize, the Lannan Award for Fiction and the Commonwealth Poetry Prize for the Americas.
Reading this book contributed to these challenges:
