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Fugitive Pieces
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Fugitive Pieces

novel by Michaels
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Quick Summary

Fugitive Pieces is a 1996 novel by Canadian author Anne Michaels. The novel, written in prose as dense and imagistic as Michaels's poetry, explores themes of memory, loss, time, and history, alongside the power and beauty of the natural world.1

The story follows Jakob Beer, a Jewish boy rescued from Nazi-occupied Poland by a Greek geologist named Athos. After his parents are murdered and his sister disappears, Jakob is taken to Greece and then to Toronto, where he becomes a translator and poet, grappling with the legacy of the Holocaust. Following Jakob's death, his friend Ben, a professor haunted by his survivor parents' trauma, continues to explore Jakob's legacy, particularly the connection between natural phenomena and the impact of historical trauma. A film adaptation of Fugitive Pieces was released in 2006.1

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2 Britannica Sources
  1. Anne Michaels
  2. Four Fugitive Pieces, Op. 15

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