Cirrus@Austlit

'A decade before she died, my grandmother Lucy, whose Hebrew name was Leah but who was known to us as Nanna, decided to write her memoirs. English wasn’t her first language, let alone her second or third, so rather than write she chose to speak. When she was finished, the contents of eight cassette tapes were typed up and bound in blue plastic covers. Copies were made for both daughters and all five grandchildren, of whom I am the eldest.' (Introduction)

'A beautiful work of the imagination, straddling history, memory, trauma and testimony

'In 1917, a young composer writes a suite of twenty pieces for piano. Each pass by like a gust of wind. They are short, violent and strange - the music of another world. In 1938, a young Jewish family flees Italy for Sydney, Australia. In 1942, another family, this time Polish, is nearly destroyed.

'Half a century later, a young man begins to understand the role the young composer's strange visions have played in everything that came before him and all that has come to be.

'In his first book, Simon Tedeschi applies elements - from history, memory and the body of the musician - to make a remarkable work of imagination and fractal beauty. He straddles the borders of poetry and prose, fiction and fact, trauma and testimony. Fugitive is filled with what Russian poet Konstantin Balmont called 'the fickle play of rainbows'.' (Publication summary)