From the back cover: "Winner of major awards in three countries, including: the Orange Prize for Fiction; the Chapters/Books in Canada First Novel Award; the Trillium Award; a Lannan Literary Award for Fiction; the Guardian Fiction Award; and the Jewish quarterly Prize for Fiction."
" As a young boy during the Second World War, Jakob Beer is rescued from the mud in Poland by an unlikely savior, the scientist Athos Roussos, and he is taken to Greece, then, at war's end, to Toronto. It is here that his loss gradually surfaces, as does the haunting question of his sister's fate. Later in life, as a translator and a poet, and now with the glorious Michaela, Jakob meets Ben, a young professor whose own legacies of the war kindle within him a fascination with the older man and his writing."