‘Any book compared to The Book Thief and The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas is sure to have an exciting plot, be a fantastic eye opener, and have loveable characters’
This is the sort of book that is best read while knowing as little about it as possible. Knowing the plot would spoil the captivating dreamy mystery and the magical spell of the beautiful prose. But I will tell you this. It’s about a naïve but curious 7 year old Polish girl called Anna, who gives us a fresh and new perspective to such a familiar war. One day, her father, a linguistics professor, had to visit town for a few hours, and never came back. We know of course that he was taken by the Nazis, but as a small child Anna displays a surprising lack of curiosity about his whereabouts. Instead, turned away by her father’s friends, she attaches herself to the Swallow Man.
Who is the Swallow Man? A very good question, for even after finishing the book we are none the wiser as to his identity. Kind but cruel. Crazy but the sanest man in Poland. Clever, but sometimes seemingly hopelessly stupid. He is a man of contradictions and metaphors, and even Anna doesn’t know who he really is. This book is the story of their travels, walking Poland as father and daughter, as essential to each other as guns to the army they evade. It is a tale about the meaning of truth, and of good and evil.
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