Michaels, Anne

(Canadian, 1958– )

Anne Michaels had published two collections of poetry in her native Canada before she became an international celebrity for her first novel, Fugitive Pieces (1997), which won the Orange Prize. It is written in a highly poetic style, and its first half concerns the rescue of a young Polish boy, Jakob Beer, during the Holocaust by a Greek archaeologist. The second half tells the story of Ben, Jakob's son, a second-generation Holocaust survivor, and his efforts to come to terms with his parents’ trauma.

Virginia Woolf, Caryl Phillips, Michèle Roberts  SV