The Way Back
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- £6.99
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- £6.99
Publisher Description
A US National Book Award Finalist: the new fantasy novel from the author of the acclaimed crossover novel Anna and the Swallow Man. A story for fans of Neil Gaiman, Philip Pullman and The Book Thief.
'As timeless as a fairy tale' - New York Times
'Steeped in the rich traditions of ghost stories and Jewish folklore, this remarkable feat of storytelling is sure to delight' - Kirkus Reviews
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 . . . ?
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
At once historical and tenderly intimate in scope, Savit's (Anna and the Swallow Man) ambitious novel begins in the Eastern European shtetl of Tupnik in the 19th century, where the arrival of the Messenger of Death sets two Jewish youths on intersecting paths. The boy, Yehuda Leib, is desperate to recover a soul from Death; the girl, Bluma, eight days his junior, seeks to escape Death's angel after accidentally acquiring its instrument: a seemingly innocuous but powerful spoon. Both travel into the Far Country, a graveyard-adjacent realm inhabited by demons and the Army of the Dead, attracting the attention of powerful, corrupt demon nobles who see them as tools. Savit suffuses folklore and Jewish mysticism into a narrative tangle of chases and bargains, otherworldly horrors a wheelchair woven of still-growing fingernails is particularly memorable and delicate, compassionate moments, all studded with Yiddishisms. The duo's journey across the demonic demesnes and the mortal town of Zubinsk, where an open wedding invitation convenes both devout Hasidim and opportunistic entities, all looking to benefit from a holy presence, presents a bewitching allegorical adventure comprised of small, beautifully composed moments. Ages 12 up.
