The Book of Pearl

5 hrs. 38 min.

Children's Books, Audio Fairy Tales & Poems

Language Russian

Author Timothée de Fombelle

Narrator Irina Vorobyova

Description

This detective story began on a rainy evening in Paris. A few years remained before the Second World War, and people were still lining up for sweets. Jacques Pearl, as always, wrapped the marmalade in his signature silky paper when he saw a boy freezing on the street—soaked through. The boy didn’t speak French, and how he ended up there was a mystery. Time would pass: he would take the name Joshua and replace the Pearl couple’s dead son.

Or maybe this story began at a different moment, as an adventure novel. When a fourteen-year-old, tired and bloodied, ran through the woods and came across an extraordinary cabin. Inside lived a silent man named Joshua Pearl, who set aside an entire room in his home for suitcases. Astonishing how many of them there were here! But even more astonishing was what they contained. Neatly wrapped in paper labeled “Confectionery ‘House P’,” they held all kinds of oddities. A little thimble in a red box, an amber sphere with a petrified seed inside, a skull made of ivory—priceless artifacts stolen somewhere, perhaps?

Maybe there is also a third beginning to this story—the most incredible of all: the young Ilian falls in love with the beautiful girl Olia, but they aren’t meant to be together… No matter where you start telling the story, it will seem unbelievable—at least to those who have lost the ability to believe in fairy tales.

Timothée de Fombelle’s novel received a special prize for best teen work at the Montreuil book fair in France.