Overview

'An astonishing memoir... as gripping as any thriller,' -Sunday Times 'Utterly compelling, at once painful and exquisite,' - Philippe Sands, author of East West Street In 1921, Franoise Frenkel - a Jewish woman from Poland - opens Berlin's first French bookshop. It is a dream come true. The bookshop attracts artists and diplomats, celebrities and poets. It brings Franoise peace, friendship and prosperity. Then, in the summer of 1939, the dream ends and Franoise begins a desperate, headlong flight from Nazi persecution. Unfolding in Berlin, Paris and against the stunning landscapes of southern France, A Bookshop in Berlin is a heartbreaking tale of human cruelty and unending kindness - and of a woman whose lust for life refuses to leave her, even in her darkest hours.

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9781805330318

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'It has massive potential to connect with readers as an eyewitness testimony to the creep of oppression and hatred alongside its moral defence of literature, art and freedom' -The Bookseller, Editor's Choice

Author Information

Very little is known about Franoise Frenkel's life. She was born in Poland in 1889, and in 1921 set up the first French-language bookshop in Berlin with her husband. In 1939, she returned to Paris, and after the German invasion the following year fled to occupied Vichy. After several years in hiding, she made a desperate attempt to cross the border to Switzerland. Frenkel died in Nice in 1975. Her memoir, originally published in Geneva in 1945, was rediscovered in a flea market in 2010, republished in the original French and is now being translated and published in numerous languages for the first time. Stephanie Smee is a translator of French adult and children's books into English. Her other languages include German, Italian and Swedish.

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