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Quote by Anne Michaels

“Even as a child, even as my blood-past was drained from me, I understood that if I were strong enough to accept it, I was being offered a second history.”

Quote by Anne Michaels

Work

Fugitive Pieces

Fugitive Pieces is a novel that follows the life of Jakob Beer, a Polish Jewish child who survives the Holocaust by hiding in the ruins of his home. Rescued by a Greek geologist, he is taken to the island of Zakynthos, where he begins to piece together his shattered past. The narrative later shifts to Athos, a young Canadian historian who becomes obsessed with Jakob's story. The book delves into themes of trauma, the act of bearing witness, and the ways in which history and personal memory intertwine. Through lyrical prose, the novel examines how the past can be both a burden and a source of strength, and how storytelling can offer a path toward healing. more

Author

Anne Michaels
Anne Michaels

Anne Michaels, born on April 15, 1958, is a renowned Canadian poet. Her works are known for their profound emotions and unique narrative style, which have won her a wide audience. more

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“The shadow-past is shaped by everything that never happened. Invisible, it melts the present like rain through karst. A biography of longing. It steers us like magnetism, a spirit torque. This is how one becomes undone by a smell, a word, a place, the photo of a mountain of shoes. By love that closes its mouth before calling a name.”

“Translation is a kind of transubstantiation; one poem becomes another. You can choose your philosophy of translation just as you choose how to live: the free adaptation that sacrifices detail to meaning, the strict crib that sacrifices meaning to exactitude. The poet moves from life to language, the translator moves from language to life; both, like the immigrant, try to identify the invisible, what's between the lines, the mysterious implications.”

“Our historical bequest is sublime. I have inherited a fragmented but highly creative exile and, since 1948, a home. I don't know that I want to settle there. I prefer the creative spur of exile. () But wherever I am I shall be Jewish, and that sound will inform every syllable I write. I am blessed with a long ancestry of wisdom, prophecy, and promise, a line of overwhelming creative achievements, courage, humor, and, above all, a dogged and chronic permanence, the greatest legacy of all.”