Gavriel Savit

Anna and the Swallow Man is a stunning, literary, and wholly original debut novel that tells a new WW2 story. Krakow, 1939, is no place to grow up. There are a million marching soldiers and a thousand barking dogs. And Anna Lania is just seven years old when the Germans take her father and suddenly, she's alone. Then she meets the Swallow Man. He is a mystery, strange and tall. And like Anna's missing father, he has a gift for languages: Polish, Russian, German, Yiddish, even Bird. When he summons a bright, beautiful swallow down to his hand to stop her from crying, Anna is entranced. Over the course of their travels together, Anna and the Swallow Man will dodge bombs, tame soldiers, and even, despite their better judgement, make a friend. But in a world gone mad, everything can prove dangerous...

If the world of the living were a suit of clothes and the world of the dead the bony flesh beneath, then at each elbow there would be a cemetery gate. Here the dead rub up against the living world. Here the living world wears thin. Yehuda Leib and Bluma have seperate, unexpected meetings with The Dark One: Death. Meetings which push them on journeys far from their homes across the Far Country - the world of the dead... From the author of the acclaimed crossover novel, Anna and the Swallow Man, a stand-alone literary fantasy set in a world where the dead and the living walk side by side - though not all of them know this. Based on Jewish folk lore and traditions this is a story for fans of Neil Gaiman.

If the world of the living were a suit of clothes and the world of the dead the bony flesh beneath, then at each elbow there would be a cemetery gate.Here the dead rub up against the living world. Here the living world wears thin. Yehuda Leib and Bluma have seperate, unexpected meetings with The Dark One: Death. Meetings which push them on journeys far from their homes across the Far Country - the world of the dead...

For the Jews of Eastern Europe, demons are everywhere. Talk of them is endless. The fear they summon is real. Bluma and Yehuda Leib, two young people from the little shetl of Tupik, know mostly of demons through stories - these, and the occasional shiver down the back of their necks. Until one night when they unexpectedly encounter the Dark One - Death - an encounter which sends them spinning off on a journey in search of something they have both lost. Theirs is a journey that will change everyhting. It will take them through the cemetery of Tupik and into the Far Country, the demon land filled with the souls of the dead. It will see them make pacts with demons and declare war on Death itself. But can they possibly find their way back . . . ?