The White Ravens Database

Presented by   Internationale Jugendbibliothek / International Youth Library

English / USA

Anna and the Swallow Man

Savit, Gavriel (text)
New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2016. – 232 p.
ISBN 978-0-553-51334-9
Series: A Borzoi book

World War II (1939-1945)  | Poland  | Orphan  | Survival  | Friendship  | Truth  | Language

Reading age: 12+

White Ravens issue: 2016

OPAC

Little Anna is seven when her father, a linguistics professor in Kraków, disappears. It’s 1939, just after the German army has invaded and occupied Poland, and she doesn’t know that he is a victim of the Germans’ round-up of intellectuals in Poland. Lonely and despairing of what she should do, Anna comes across the mysterious Swallow Man, whose true name is never revealed to her and who is as gifted with languages as her father was. The unlikely pair start travelling together; through the wilderness, the war, across borders and battlefields, and back again; without a clear destination. Their sole aim is to survive. Actor and singer Gabriel Savit’s debut novel tells a moving and distressing story of friendship against all odds, languages and identities, deceit, the loss of innocence, survival, and the power of storytelling. The quiet, fairytale-like voice of the narration, which is in stark contrast to the World War II setting, gives the tale a universal, timeless quality.