I Am David by Anne Holm
Published in 1963, when it won first prize in Scandinavia for fiction for older readers, the telling of the tale has not outdated it, for it is a kind of timeless pilgrim’s progress, as well as an odyssey across Europe. David knows his name and, he sometimes feels, little else. A journey, then, of self-discovery. Somehow he must transmute his ability to survive into an ability to live.
All the life he knows has been in an unnamed concentration camp in an unnamed country, but we can deduce this is a Soviet gulag. The story begins as one of the guards allows him to escape and for a long time David has no idea why. All he know is to head for Denmark.
He decides he must have a God to help him, and chooses from the gods he heard men speak of in the camp ‘the God of the green pastures and the still waters’. As he travels he makes deals with God, ones in which he does his best to be wholly honest with himself. The relationship is a living one, with ups and downs as he learns to read his experiences so that he may discover how God is guiding him.
Such an innocent in the world, he becomes an everyman, any one of us trying to make sense of our journey. Even as the author keeps us turning the page – what will happen next? how will he survive this challenge? – she is moving us deeply.
