Jakob is so pitifully thin that Athos is able to smuggle him out to Greece, the boy undetected, clinging beneath his coat. Miraculously, when starvation finally drives him from concealment, he is found by Athos, a Greek scholar who had been exploring the ancient civilisation that lay beneath the city. He burrows into the river mud and tries to survive by gathering weeds. I heard the spray of buttons, little white teeth.Īged only seven, he survived because he was playing in a hiding space, but hiding becomes a matter of survival after that. I heard the rim of the saucer in circles on the floor. She kept her buttons in a chipped saucer.
My mother had been sewing a button on my shirt. Noises never heard before, torn from my father’s mouth. Wood ripped from hinges, cracking like ice under the shouts.
In exquisite lyrical prose, the novel is written in two parts: Part 1 is the story of Jakob Beer, orphaned when the Nazis stormed his Jewish home in a Polish city. And it’s listed in 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die (2006 edition). It was shortlisted for the Giller Award too (the year that Margaret Atwood’s Alias Grace won it). Fugitive Pieces, the debut novel of acclaimed Canadian poet Anne Michaels, is a remarkable book, quite overwhelming to read but stunning in its impact.įirst published in 1996, Fugitive Pieces won the Books in Canada First Novel Award, the 1997 Orange Prize for Fiction and the Guardian Fiction Prize.
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