Inside the Parrot Cage begins with the stories Joachim tells Jean as his life nears its end. His earliest memory is that of playing and getting trapped inside a parrot cage at his aunt's hotel. This early confinement forms a powerful metaphor for his life of imprisonment, isolation and displacement. Sent into the war at the age of sixteen in a desperate attempt by the Germans to avoid defeat, Joachim quickly thereafter ended up in a Soviet camp for four years. Upon return in 1948, three years after his home and home-town had been invaded and handed over to Poland, he was officially a 'DP', a...