A Bookshop in Berlin : the rediscovered memoir of one woman's harrowing escape from the Nazis
(2019, original release: 2017)

Nonfiction

Book

Call Numbers:
MEMOIR/FRENKEL,F

Availability

Locations Call Number Status
Biography & Memoir MEMOIR/FRENKEL,F Available

Details

PUBLISHED
New York : Atria Books, 2019
©2017
EDITION
First Atria Books hardcover edition
DESCRIPTION

xiii, 269 pages : illustrations ; 22 cm

ISBN/ISSN
9781501199844, 1501199846 :, 1501199846, 9781501199844
LANGUAGE
English
NOTES

"First published in France as Rien où poser sa tête by L'Arbalète Gallimard in 2015"--Title page verso

In 1921, Françoise Frenkel--a Jewish woman from Poland--fulfills a dream. She opens La Maison du Livre, Berlin's first French bookshop, attracting artists and diplomats, celebrities and poets. The shop becomes a haven for intellectual exchange as Nazi ideology begins to poison the culturally rich city. In 1935, the scene continues to darken. First come the new bureaucratic hurdles, followed by frequent police visits and book confiscations. Françoise's dream finally shatters on Kristallnacht in November 1938, as hundreds of Jewish shops and businesses are destroyed. La Maison du Livre is miraculously spared, but fear of persecution eventually forces Françoise on a desperate, lonely flight to Paris. When the city is bombed, she seeks refuge across southern France, witnessing countless horrors: children torn from their parents, mothers throwing themselves under buses. Secreted away from one safe house to the next, Françoise survives at the heroic hands of strangers risking their lives to protect her

"Originally published in English by Vintage Australia in 2017"--Title page verso

"Previously published by Pushkin Press in 2018"--Title page verso

Translated from the French

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