Undeserving novels often win prizes. One need look no further than last year's Booker, but the critical success of this determinedly lyric prose-poem is a mystery. Oppressively influenced by Michael Ondaat je's work, Michaels alternates reportage with rhetorical speeches in an artificial and contrived narrative of multiple pretensions. Young Jakob, a Pole, is rescued by Athos, a Greek archaeologist. The boy likens himself to Tollund Man or Grauballe Man. When Athos dies, Jakob drifts into a relationship with Alex, "a character in a screwball comedy searching in vain for a serious moment". Then the narrative switches from Jakob to Ben, a Canadian academic who sounds a lot like Jakob - a now dead but famous poet. All this novel proves is that Michaels knows little about characterisation and less about dialogue, and that yet again a weak novel has been seriously overrated because it draws on the horrors of the Holocaust. E.B.