Anna and the Swallow Man by Gavriel Savit is one of the more quiet WW II
books I have read, but it is also one of the most beautiful. Anna Lania is
seven years old at the beginning of this story. She lives in Krakow, Poland
with her father. He is a professor of linguistics at the university, and so he
and Anna speak several different languages.
Anna thought that each of the languages her father
spoke had been tailored, like a bespoke suit of clothes, to the individual
person with whom he conversed. French was not French; it was Monsieur Bouchard.
Yiddish was not Yiddish; it was Reb Shmulik. Every word and phrase of Armenian
that Anna had ever heard reminded her of the face of the little old tatik who
always greeted her and her father with small cups of strong, bitter coffee.
Every word of Armenian smelled like coffee.
One day in November of 1939,
Anna’s father does not return home from work. Unbeknownst to Anna, he has been
taken by the Germans. She has been spending the day at Herr Doktor Fuchsmann’s
shop. After several days, the formerly friendly shop-owner doesn’t want to take
care of her anymore. So it is outside of his shop that she meets the Swallow Man.
Rather, she sees him first:
The man was tall and exceedingly thin. His suit,
brown wool and in three pieces, must’ve been made specifically for him…He
carried an old physician’s bag, the brown leather worn a bit lighter than the
color of his dark suit. It had brass fittings, and on the side of the bag was
the monogram SWG in a faded red that must’ve originally been the color of his
dark necktie. A tall black umbrella rode between the two handles of the bag,
stacked on its top, despite the clearness of the sky.
Anna and the Swallow Man
share an affinity for speaking languages—for changing into different people as
they change their native tongue. They form a small team, and together, crossing
the Polish countryside during the throes of World War II. Who can be trusted? As
the reader meets each character he or she is filled with either a sense of
delight and love, or pure terror and dread. Who is the Swallow Man? He tells
Anna: “to be found is to be gone forever.” One can only stay hidden for so
long.
Gavriel Savit proves he is a
master of words. Words, and language, play a large role in Anna’s story. This
book asks the big questions from a child’s eye-view: what is war and what is
death? It also asks the most inner question of the self: how do we know who we
are? Does our language determine that?
Anna and the Swallow Man is a beautiful story that soars with gravity and
magical-realism. As the snow falls, it will be easy to imagine Anna walking in the
shadow of the Swallow Man in the snowy Polish countryside, 1939. This book is a
young adult novel that teens and adults alike will enjoy.
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