Fugitive Pieces
CBC Books | | Posted: February 7, 2017 9:33 PM | Last Updated: July 19, 2019
Anne Michaels
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. 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. (From Emblem Editions)
Fugitive Pieces won the the Books in Canada First Novel Award (now known as the Amazon.ca First Novel Award) and the Orange Prize for Fiction in 1997. The novel was shortlisted for the 1996 Giller Prize.
- 3 books that inspire Anne Michaels
- Anne Michaels shares the best writing advice she's ever received
- Anne Michaels shares her favourite characters in fiction
From the book
My sister had long outgrown the hiding place. Bella was fifteen and even I admitted she was beautiful, with heavy brows and magnificent hair like black syrup, thick and luxurious, a muscle down her back. "A work of art," our mother said, brushing it for her while Bella sat in a chair. I was still small enough to vanish behind the wallpaper in the cupboard, cramming my head sideways between choking plaster and beams, eyelashes scraping.
Since those minutes inside the wall, I've imagined the dead lose every sense except hearing. The burst door. Wood ripped from hinges, cracking like ice under the shouts. Noises never heard before, torn from my father's mouth. Then silence. My mother had been sewing a button on my shirt. She kept her buttons in a chipped saucer. I heard the rim of the saucer in circles on the floor. I heard the spray of buttons, little white teeth.
Blackness filled me, spread from the back of my head into my eyes as if my brain has been punctured. Spread from stomach to legs. I gulped and gulped, swallowing it whole. The wall filled with smoke. I struggled out and stared while the air caught fire.
From Fugitive Pieces by Anne Michaels ©1999. Published by Emblem Editions.