Published to rapturous acclaim, this fiercely concentrated and beautifully written novel is a story of unspeakable loss and unhoped-for redemption, of history and memory. It is the story of Jakob Beer, a Polish Jew who at the age of seven sees his parents murdered in the Holocaust, buries himself alive, and is resurrected by a Greek scientist who sees the starving child burst from the mud.

As Jakob flees across Europe and America, he is transformed from a half-wild survivor into a scholar and translator who extracts meaning from the unfathomable horror of our time. Filled with mysterious symmetries and rendered in heart-stopping prose, Fugitive Pieces is a triumphant work of the literary and spiritual imagination.

"Word by blessed word, it is a gorgeously written book: aflame with the subzero cold of history and the passions of emotional comprehension". -- Boston Globe

"Lovely...musical and magical.... Put this book alongside The English Patient". -- Chicago Tribune