Jakob Beer is seven years old when he hides behind a wall and watches Nazi soldiers abduct his family in occupied Poland. After being rescued from the mud by a Greek geologist named Athos, Jakob moves first to Zakynthos and later to Toronto. The narrative follows his lifelong attempt to reconcile the physical absence of his sister, Bella, with the indelible persistence of her memory. Through his career as a poet and translator, Jakob examines how geological time and the structure of language can preserve or distort the history of a genocide.
Readers interested in the intersection of archaeology, linguistics, and historical trauma find value in this text. It appeals to those who study how second-generation survivors inherit memory and how scientific metaphors explain human grief. The reader finishes the book with a specific understanding of how historical atrocities alter a person’s perception of the natural landscape and the physical world. It provides a technical look at the way words serve as a bridge between a catastrophic past and an functional present.
Deep, inward-looking, contemplative, open-ended and thought-provoking; a moderate read.
Best for readers like The Wisdom Collector. Which reader are you?
- Published
- 1997
- ISBN
- 9780786212002
- Language
- EN
