Palaces of the Crow
Palaces of the Crow is an inventive, beautifully written work that I cannot recommend highly enough. It is historical fiction – the story is set in Lithuania during WWII with later excursions to 1971 – but it is also so much more: a novel of ideas and speculation; of inspired imagination and insight; of beautifully presented and utterly moving characterisation; and unexpected narrative twists.
The story centres on four children, all at risk as the Nazis start to make headway into the East: Neriya, who is Jewish; Czesław, descended from Polish aristocrats; Kezia, a Roma; and the Boy, a younger child whose story is only hinted at, rendered speechless by the atrocities he has witnessed. He is later given the name Innokentiy – Innocence. Every child has lost their family in this new, incomprehensible and violent world. But the children come together, supporting each other in their bid to survive, assisted by a colony of curiously knowing crows who lead them to sanctuary.
The story is ultimately told from every child’s perspective. While the main narrative is presented in linear fashion – from 1941 to 1944 – there are also flashbacks to earlier times, stories within stories, and finally the flashforward to 1971. The children understand danger but are less aware of the ideological conflicts developing around them: the Soviets, the Nazis, the Lithuanian partisans – but the reader understands them. And we also see the bigger forces at play in the natural world of evolution although, as Nayler suggests through the crows, this may be so much more. The opening epigraph positions Darwin’s ‘mutual struggle’ next to Propotkin’s ‘mutual aid’, the tension at the heart of the novel and its structure.
While undoubtedly a philosophical novel of ideas, it is also a brilliantly handled and utterly moving narrative of human suffering, loss and survival. In the busy field of WWII fiction, this, for me, stands head and shoulders above the rest.
