Womens Prize For Fiction Winner
Fugitive Pieces
by Anne Michaels
Summary
Rescued from the mud of a drowned Polish town, a young boy carries the trauma of the Holocaust into a new life in Greece and Canada. Michaels, a poet by trade, builds the novel from luminous fragments of memory, grief and geology, asking how language can hold what history tries to erase. Her debut became a touchstone for lyrical writing about catastrophe and survival.
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Historical Context & Significance
Anne Michaels was already an acclaimed poet, and her first novel confirmed the prize's appetite for ambitious literary debuts.