Book Review – Anna And The Swallow Man

by Gavriel Savit (The Bodley Head) ISBN: 9781782300533

Anna is a young girl living in Poland in 1939. Her father is taken away to a concentration camp without warning. After seven years of extraordinary companionship, Anna is left to fend for herself.

She is rejected by all their old friends and is left cold, hungry and lonely. This is when she meets ‘The Swallow Man’. He shows Anna a new sense of magic. This is the start of an extraordinary journey, where intriguing new characters manage to spark a fire within the pages of this book.

I found this multi-layered story a pleasure to read. Each word seemed like it had been intricately planned and each character managed to embellish the novel further. I found this book deeply affecting, and it was fascinating to read a holocaust story from the point of view of such an unsuspecting young child.

The only critique I have on the book is that I found that the words seemed to go off topic a bit too much, which made me zone out at times.

Veerle Vijverberg
4/5
Posted on: 5th June 2016
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