„Fugitive Pieces“ is one of my favorite books and one I re-read a couple of times. It’s difficult to pinpoint what exactly it is that makes me go back to it, but I think it has something to do how books were the safe heaven for a little boy and I could relate to it a lot. All it needs to keep a kid safe is one person who loves it, something to eat and drink, a place to sleep and some books.

Jakob Beer is a little polish boy who had buried himself to hide from the soldiers who murdered his family. He is rescued by a kind Greek geologist who is not even sure he found a little human being in the mud until the boy starts to cry. He smuggles him back to Greece and fosters him back to life. He shows him the beauty of the world that is hidden in the library behind the covers of his books on plants, history, fossile, stones and slowly he helps Jakob transform from a wild Holocaust survivor to an artist.

I highly recommend this book to you, a novel about mysterious symmetries, loss, redumption and the triumph of love. I read somewhere a book that should not so much be read but you should surrender to it.

Accompany this book with Aaron Appelfelds „Geschichte eines Lebens / The story of a Life“ and Haruki Murakamis „Kafka on the Shore“