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I am a historian of the Nazi occupation of France during the Second World War and the author of two books about the period. My book about the Oradour-sur-Glane massacre (Silent Village) was published in French this year, and as a result, I was interviewed live on French television. I am fascinated by history from the ground up, and I love revealing the stories of ordinary people whose contributions have been under-represented. My current PhD research focuses on the Resistance in rural French villages, interpreted through a series of micro-histories. I also adore historical fiction. I have a master's degree from Cardiff University and a BA joint Hons from the University of Exeter.
No work of fiction has had such a profound effect on historians of Occupied France as this staggeringly beautiful book. I had never read fiction like this before, a novel written contemporaneously yet showing such a depth of knowledge of the world around by a novelist who saw beauty beyond the chaos that had engulfed her world.
The young French novelist of Ukrainian-Jewish origin had planned five books yet only completed two before being killed in Auschwitz in 1942. This book contains the first two complete novels which are very different stories, but equally dramatic and written in prose that flows poetically. I loved the first novel, about the exodus from Paris in May 1940, just as much as the second, a love story that was used for the film of this heart-wrenching book.
In 1941, Irene Nemirovsky sat down to write a book that would convey the magnitude of what she was living through, not in terms of battles and politicians, but by evoking the domestic lives and personal trials of the ordinary citizens of France. She did not live to see her ambition fulfilled, or to know that sixty-five years later, "Suite Francaise" would be published for the first time, and hailed as a masterpiece. Set during a year that begins with France's fall to the Nazis in June 1940 and ends with Germany turning its attention to Russia, "Suite Francaise" falls…
I am a historian of the Nazi occupation of France during the Second World War and the author of two books about the period. My book about the Oradour-sur-Glane massacre (Silent Village) was published in French this year, and as a result, I was interviewed live on French television. I am fascinated by history from the ground up, and I love revealing the stories of ordinary people whose contributions have been under-represented. My current PhD research focuses on the Resistance in rural French villages, interpreted through a series of micro-histories. I also adore historical fiction. I have a master's degree from Cardiff University and a BA joint Hons from the University of Exeter.
Sebastian Faulks' trilogy of books set in wartime France prompted me to become a historian of the Nazi Occupation of France. Not only is Faulks' prose always utterly engaging, but he is also a master storyteller. The historical detail in it is worn lightly, yet it all feeds into the building of a world that feels real and beautiful, yet terrifying.
I love historical fiction, and this novel helped me understand a time and place that fascinated me. It presents choices that ordinary people had to make in extraordinary times not that long ago. I felt I was shoulder to shoulder with the main character, and the book made me wonder what I would have done. What would my choices have been, and would I have been so brave?
A remarkable story of a Scottish woman in Occupied France pursuing a perilous mission of her own
FROM THE AUTHOR OF THE INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER BIRDSONG
In 1942, Charlotte Gray, a young Scottish woman, heads for Occupied France on a dual mission - officially, to run an apparently simple errand for a British special operations group and unofficially, to search for her lover, an English airman missing in action. She travels to the village of Lavaurette, dyeing her hair and changing her name to conceal her identity. As the people in the small town prepare to meet their terrible destiny, Charlotte…
I am a historian of the Nazi occupation of France during the Second World War and the author of two books about the period. My book about the Oradour-sur-Glane massacre (Silent Village) was published in French this year, and as a result, I was interviewed live on French television. I am fascinated by history from the ground up, and I love revealing the stories of ordinary people whose contributions have been under-represented. My current PhD research focuses on the Resistance in rural French villages, interpreted through a series of micro-histories. I also adore historical fiction. I have a master's degree from Cardiff University and a BA joint Hons from the University of Exeter.
I came across this remarkable contemporary memoir, written by a Jewish journalist between 1943 and 1945 when researching a specific village in the Dordogne. Scheyer's family happened to have been hidden first in the village and then in a local convent.
This was only part of the extraordinary experiences of the writer during the Second World War when he was forced to flee Vienna and ended up in rural France, having been incarcerated twice. I do not think any other writer could recount their experiences in such simple yet powerful prose. It is one of only a handful of memoirs that have left me so full of admiration. A unique document.
A recently discovered account of an Austrian Jewish writer's flight, persecution, and clandestine life in wartime France.
As arts editor for one of Vienna's principal newspapers, Moriz Scheyer knew many of the city's foremost artists, and was an important literary journalist. With the advent of the Nazis he was forced from both job and home. In 1943, in hiding in France, Scheyer began drafting what was to become this book.
Tracing events from the Anschluss in Vienna, through life in Paris and unoccupied France, including a period in a French concentration camp, contact with the Resistance, and clandestine life in…
I am a historian of the Nazi occupation of France during the Second World War and the author of two books about the period. My book about the Oradour-sur-Glane massacre (Silent Village) was published in French this year, and as a result, I was interviewed live on French television. I am fascinated by history from the ground up, and I love revealing the stories of ordinary people whose contributions have been under-represented. My current PhD research focuses on the Resistance in rural French villages, interpreted through a series of micro-histories. I also adore historical fiction. I have a master's degree from Cardiff University and a BA joint Hons from the University of Exeter.
I cannot think of a better example of micro-history, a specialism of mine, that tells the story of a single event yet delves so deeply and reveals so much. Paula Schwartz is a renowned historian of Occupied France who specializes in gender, daily life, and the Communist Party in France during this period of immense upheaval.
Her unequalled knowledge of these areas are brought together in her account of a May 1942 street protest over food shortages that had deep and tragic consequences, and were the tip of the iceberg of a Resistance movement that was in full development. This book makes current scholarship accessible to the wider public in ways that I had never before seen.
On Mother's Day, 31 May 1942, a group of women stormed a small grocery store at the intersection of two Parisian market streets, the rue de Buci and the rue de Seine, to protest the food shortages that had become a chronic feature of daily life. The then-outlawed French Communist party aimed to channel the frustrations of hungry Parisians by organizing such actions throughout the capital and beyond. The so-called "women's demonstration on the rue de Buci" was one such protest, part of a larger, overarching resistance movement against the collaborationist Vichy regime and the German occupiers. The Buci affair…
What I look for in a book is something that triggers my serious side. So be it if that removes a whole range of fantasy books or those that merely titillate. Because I’ve traveled a lot, ‘feasible fiction’ is what I write and what I look for in other books. A story might be entirely fictitious, but as long as it’s not far-fetched, has a cast of realistic characters, an international or historic location, and keeps me on my toes to the very end, that’s great. If it’s got some politics and science thrown in, that’s even better. I hope my list lives up to expectations.
Choosing a Ken Follett book is difficult–there are so many.
Eye of the Needle, a spy thriller, was the book that put Follett at the forefront of thriller writers, and I normally go for books where the main character is a man, but, in this case, I’ve chosen this book. This one is about a gang of disparate women (the Jackdaws) sent to blow up a telephone exchange in France just before D-Day. Flick is the young British secret agent tasked with assembling the team before parachuting into France.
I always aim to write perfectly feasible stories because life is too unpredictable to end with everyone living ‘happily ever after.’ Ken Follett also knows this, which is why this book is not only filled with deep secrets but also ends with tragedy – but I don’t want to spoil it for you!
In his own bestselling tradition of Eye of the Needle and The Key to Rebecca, Ken Follett delivers a breathtaking novel of suspense set in the most dangerous days of World War II.
D-Day is approaching. They don't know where or when, but the Germans know it'll be soon, and for Felicity "Flick" Clariet, the stakes have never been higher. A senior agent in the ranks of the Special Operations Executive (SOE) responsible for sabotage, Flick has survived to become one of Britain's most effective operatives in Northern France. She knows that the Germans' ability to thwart the Allied attack…
I love to read. I always have. I also love to write mysteries that, hopefully, keep my reader guessing until the end of the book. I look for books that not only provide me with a mystery to solve but also inform me of situations and/or places I would otherwise never learn about. I have found all the books on my list to fill that need. They are just an example of the many I have found and read.
This book provided an insight into WWII in Italy. It is captivating and informative.
It tells the story of Pino, a brave 17-year-old who not only spied on the Germans who occupied his homeland but also crossed the Alps many times to save Jewish people. Full of mystery and intrigue, it was hard to put down until the end.
Soon to be a major television event from Pascal Pictures, starring Tom Holland.
Based on the true story of a forgotten hero, the USA Today and #1 Amazon Charts bestseller Beneath a Scarlet Sky is the triumphant, epic tale of one young man's incredible courage and resilience during one of history's darkest hours.
Pino Lella wants nothing to do with the war or the Nazis. He's a normal Italian teenager-obsessed with music, food, and girls-but his days of innocence are numbered. When his family home in Milan is destroyed by Allied bombs, Pino joins an underground railroad helping Jews escape…
It was in 1982, while a Fulbright scholar in the USSR researching my doctoral dissertation, that I realized my responsibility as a historian extended far beyond writing history books. I lived among Russians and saw up close how the Kremlin-controlled what citizens knew about their own past. The future was already determined—the end of class struggle. The past was merely a made-up prologue. As a consequence of that year, I focus on the creation, preservation, and accessibility of cultural knowledge. History clues us into where we come from. Like a DNA test, it reveals how our single life is intricately braided with people we will never meet.
When I heard of the 2021 mass murder at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh, the fear of anti-Semitism became deeply personal.
I grew up just a few blocks from the synagogue. (I was raised Catholic.) In Kuznetsov’s “documentary novel” about Nazi-occupied Ukraine, the author recounts how, as an 8-year old, he witnessed the German army’s 1941 invasion of Kiev.
They set about massacring over 30,000 Jews within the first week of occupation. This happened in a large ravine only a stone’s throw from the boy’s home. This third edition of the book comprises the heavily censored published Soviet text, the uncensored text, and Kuznetsov’s added commentaries.
It is a palimpsest that lets us see past, present, and no doubt future ways that regimes use history to control what people know about their own past.
The powerful rediscovered masterpiece of Kyiv during the Second World War, told by a young boy who saw it all.
'So here is my invitation: enter into my fate, imagine that you are twelve, that the world is at war and that nobody knows what is going to happen next...'
It was 1941 when the German army rolled into Kyiv. The young Anatoli was just twelve years old. This book is formed from his journals in which he documented what followed.
Many Ukrainians welcomed the invading army, hoping for liberation from Soviet rule. But within ten days the Nazis had…
I like happy endings. There, I’ve said it. I love books. I’ve written more than sixty to date, and I read all the time in every genre. I also love history, and World War II is a particular passion. It was an era rich with drama, horror, and heroism, with stories begging to be told. So many of those stories, real and fictional, end in heartbreak. But the great thing about being a writer is that I can take the characters I love through hell and back, then, in the end, have them come shining through. That’s what I want as a reader, too.
Great book, with an amazing cast of characters. In 1947, Charlie St. Clair, young and pregnant, teams up with elderly, war-traumatized Eve Gardiner to find Charlie’s missing cousin Rose, and in the process, the two uncover the still-living villain who betrayed Eve’s WWI spy ring.
This dual timeline book will keep you on the edge of your seat and comes complete with a you’ll-jump-for-joy happy ending.
In an enthralling new historical novel from national bestselling author Kate Quinn, two women-a female spy recruited to the real-life Alice Network in France during World War I and an unconventional American socialite searching for her cousin in 1947-are brought together in a mesmerizing story of courage and redemption. 1947. In the chaotic aftermath of World War II, American college girl Charlie St. Clair is pregnant, unmarried, and on the verge of being thrown out of her very proper family. She's also nursing a desperate hope that her beloved cousin Rose, who disappeared in Nazi-occupied France during the war, might…
I’m an old guy. I say this with a bit of cheek and a certain amount of incongruity. All the books on my list are old. That’s one area of continuity. Another, and I’ll probably stop at two, is that they all deal with ordinary people caught in extraordinary circumstances—those curveballs of life we flail at with an unfamiliar bat; the getting stuck on the Interstate behind a semi and some geezer in a golf cap hogging the passing lane in a Buick Le Sabre. No one makes it through this life unscathed. How we cope does more to define us than a thousand smiles when things are rosy. Thus endeth the lesson.
A masterful debut novel, post-WWII, and dealing with characters in the heat of battle, internally and externally.
I was forced to read it in eleventh grade Honors English (what they called AP pre-AP. Like I said, I’m old). I reread it for edification as a young writer and was awed by the craftsmanship. The writing is dense and requires patience. War is never pretty.
Hailed as one of the finest novels to come out of the Second World War, The Naked and the Dead received unprecedented critical acclaim upon its publication and has since enjoyed a long and well-deserved tenure in the American canon. This fiftieth anniversary edition features a new introduction created especially for the occasion by Norman Mailer.
Written in gritty, journalistic detail, the story follows a platoon of Marines who are stationed on the Japanese-held island of Anopopei. Composed in 1948 with the wisdom of a man twice Mailer's age and the raw courage of the young man he was, The…
For as long as I can remember, I have been deeply interested in how people understand and use the past. Whether it is a patient reciting a personal account of his or her past to a therapist or a scholar writing a history in many volumes, I find that I am consistently fascinated by the importance and different meanings we assign to what has gone before us. What I love about Herodotus is that he reveals something new in each reading. He has a profound humanity that he brings to the genre that he pretty much invented. And to top it all off, he is a great storyteller!
Michael Ondaatje’s novel is one of the most beautiful books I have ever read. It is not a study or analysis of Herodotus’ history, and yet Herodotus’ spirit infuses virtually every page. Taking place during World War II, it explores the intertwined lives of four characters, including the unnamed English patient, who has survived the shooting-down of his plane, although he is severely burned.
He has nothing with him but his annotated copy of Herodotus’ Histories. I loved Anthony Minghella’s 1996 film adaptation of the novel, and it is no criticism of the film to say that it treats only one of the many strands one finds in the book. Meditating on space, time, identity, and truth, The English Patient is a book that I think Herodotus would have loved.
Hana, a Canadian nurse, exhausted by death, and grieving for her own dead father; the maimed thief-turned-Allied-agent, Caravaggio; Kip, the emotionally detached Indian sapper - each is haunted in different ways by the man they know only as the English patient, a nameless burn victim who lies in an upstairs room. His extraordinary knowledge and morphine-induced memories - of the North African desert, of explorers and tribes, of history and cartography; and also of forbidden love, suffering and betrayal - illuminate the story, and leave all the characters for ever changed.
