Instead of his parents, a strange man and woman are living there, and they tell Felix to leave. He wonders if he has misremembered where he used to live until he sees his family’s bookstore. The houses look as if the occupants left suddenly, but because of all the gunfire in the distance, Felix assumes they have gone hunting.įinally, Felix arrives at his village he is shocked to find it nearly empty. It is several days’ walk back to his family’s village, but along the way, Felix finds all the food and clothing he needs at an empty house. He decides to sneak out of the orphanage to go warn them, despite the warnings of a recently arrived Jewish orphan. He realizes that if the Nazis find his family’s bookstore, his parents may be in danger. When the Nazis begin emptying the orphanage library, burning the books, Felix wonders why the Nazis hate books so much. When a car arrives at the orphanage the next day, Felix assumes it is his parents he is shocked to see stern looking men exit the car, each wearing a band on his arm. Receiving such a thing is a miracle due to wartime food scarcity, and he takes it as a sign that his parents are finally returning for him. One night at dinner, Felix receives a whole carrot in his watery stew. To pass the time, he makes up adventure stories starring his parents.

Since then, Felix has waited patiently, secure in the knowledge that God, Jesus, Mary, the Pope, and Adolf Hitler are taking care of him and the rest of the world. When he was six years old, his Jewish parents had left him there, promising that they would return for him once they fixed the problems with their book-selling business. It is summertime in Poland in the year 1942, and Felix Salinger has been at the Catholic orphanage in the mountains for three years and eight months.

Morris gleitzman once then now after