Fugitive Pieces

By: Anne Michaels

Narrated by: Anne Michaels

Length: 8 hrs and 26 mins

Publisher's summary

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 savior, 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.

©1998 Anne Michaels (P)2021 McClelland & Stewart

Critic reviews

"It stands alone, a stunning testament to the shaping bonds of memory and of history...." (London Free Press)

"Extraordinary.... Michaels has dug deep and come up with treasure." (Maclean's)

"Ms. Michaels underscores the continuity of human experience, suggesting that just as we can inherit the pain and guilt of earlier generations, so too can we inherit understanding and beauty and grace...." (New York Times Book Review)

Unbelievable beautiful and sad.

I would have preferred a male narrator. To write of such horrors with such amazing grace made me listen to the book slowly so I could absorb every bit of it.

Grief is love with nowhere to go

A book about longing, loss, grief, beauty and love ~~ a rare jewel of a book that that unfolds beautifully.
Why then not a 5* review?
Anne Michaels is a poet; she is not however a narrator. She delivers this book to us as if it were a poetry reading at your local coffee house ~~ hushed and in a monotone voice devoid of all emotion. She did her book a huge disservice by narrating it herself.