Fugitive Pieces (Winner Of Guardian Fiction Prize )

Description: It is just months before the Nazi occupation of Poland, and, from the mud of a buried city, Jakob Beer, an orphaned Jewish boy, finds himself rescued by an unlikely saviour. He is saved by the geologist and humanist Athos Roussos, who takes him to his Greek island home where he becomes his student. But the trauma of Jakob's early life refuses to leave him. Living forever in the shadow of the Holocaust, although Jakob has escaped the most terrible fate of all, he must yet steel himself to excavate the horrors of his own history.

Review: 'This is a novel to lose yourself in; let the language pour over you, depositing its richness like waves lapping sand onto a beach. Michaels is a novelist of unusual and compelling power' The Times 'All but a handful of contemporary novels are dwarfed by its reach, its compassion, its wisdom This is a book to read many times. I simply can't imagine a better being published this year' Independent

Prizes: Winner of Guardian Fiction Prize 1997 and Orange Prize for Fiction 1997 and Jewish Quarterly Wingate Literary Prize for Fiction 1998.