Search results for ""Author Anne Michaels""

LONGLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE 2024**The international bestseller****A Guardian Book of the Autumn 2023****Chosen as a book of the year by the independent.co.uk**''Michaels's writing continues to stand head and shoulders above most other fiction'' OBSERVER''Through luminous moments of chance, change, and even grace, Michaels shows us our humanity'' MARGARET ATWOOD''Michaels is exceptionally open to beauty'' GUARDIAN The triumphant new novel from the author of the Orange Prize-winning Fugitive Pieces: a soaring and luminous story of chance and change_________________________________________________1917. On a battlefield near the River Escaut, John lies in the aftermath of a blast, unable to move or feel his legs. Struggling to focus his thoughts, he is lost to memory a chance encounter in a pub by a railway, a hot bath with his lover on a winte

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**The international bestseller** **A Guardian Book of the Autumn 2023** **Chosen as a book of the year by the independent.co.uk** 'Michaels’s writing continues to stand head and shoulders above most other fiction' OBSERVER 'Through luminous moments of chance, change, and even grace, Michaels shows us our humanity' MARGARET ATWOOD 'Michaels is exceptionally open to beauty' GUARDIAN The triumphant new novel from the author of the Orange Prize-winning Fugitive Pieces: a soaring and luminous story of chance and change _________________________________________________ 1917. On a battlefield near the River Escaut, John lies in the aftermath of a blast, unable to move or feel his legs. Struggling to focus his thoughts, he is lost to memory – a chance encounter in a pub by a railway, a hot bath with his lover on a winter night, his childhood on a faraway coast – as the snow falls. 1920. John has returned from war to North Yorkshire, near another river – alive, but not still whole. Reunited with Helena, an artist, he reopens his photography business and endeavours to keep on living. But the past erupts insistently into the present, as ghosts begin to surface in his pictures: ghosts whose messages he cannot understand. So begins a narrative that spans four generations, moments of connection and consequence igniting and re-igniting as the century unfolds. In luminous moments of desire, comprehension, longing, transcendence, the sparks fly upward, working their transformations decades later. Held is a novel like no other, by a writer at the height of her powers: affecting and intensely beautiful, full of mystery, wisdom and compassion. 'I am blown away by the scale, beauty, weave and thinking of this book ... It dances with words, time and ideas in a way that seems to reinvent everything I know about the novel' RACHEL JOYCE

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Jakob Beer is seven years old when he is rescued from the muddy ruins of a buried village in Nazi-occupied Poland. Of his family, he is the only one who has survived. Under the guidance of the Greek geologist Athos, Jakob must steel himself to excavate the horrors of his own history. A novel of astounding beauty and wisdom, Fugitive Pieces is a profound meditation on the resilience of the human spirit and love's ability to resurrect even the most damaged of hearts.

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Egypt, 1964. The great temple at Abu Simbel must be dismantled and resurrected high above the rising waters of the Aswan Dam. This daunting task is overseen by Avery, a young engineer who, at the same time, is carefully building a life with his new wife, Jean. But not everything can be saved once the floodgates have opened: villages will be deluged, thousands will be exiled from their homes, and graves will be moved. And when Avery and Jean suffer a terrible loss of their own, they begin their separate journeys through the landscape of grief. Weaving historical moments with the quiet intimacy of human lives, "The Winter Vault" is the story of a husband and a wife trying to find their way back to each other; of people and nations displaced; and of the myriad means by which we all seek out a place to call home.

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Miss Petitfour enjoys having adventures that are ''just the right size'' for a ''single, magical day.'' With her sixteen cats and the aid of a tablecloth as a makeshift balloon, Miss Petitfour soars - which is to say, she rises high in the air and flies - over her charmingly eccentric village, encountering adventures along the way. One never knows where the wind will take her in this delightfully seasonal collection of magical outings: perhaps to the aid of dearly loved friends and neighbors, including a hapless handyman and an onion-loving baby, or to a coconut-confetti parade, or in search of keys, lucky charms or even simply the perfect tablecloth for her next flight. A witty, whimsical, beautifully illustrated collection of tales that celebrate language, storytelling and all the pleasures of life, large and small!

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