A Bookshop in Berlin : the rediscovered memoir of one woman's harrowing escape from the Nazis / Françoise Frenkel ; with a preface from Patrick Modiano ; dossier compiled by Frédéric Maria ; translated by Stephanie Smee.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Frenkel, Françoise, 1889-1975, author.

Contributor:

Modiano, Patrick, 1945- writer of preface.

Maria, Frédéric, compiler.

Smee, Stephanie, translator.

Standardized Title:

Rien où poser sa tête. English

Language:

English

French

Subjects (All):

Frenkel, Françoise, 1889-1975.

Frenkel, Françoise.

Jewish women--Germany--Biography.

Jewish women.

Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945)--Germany--Berlin--Biography.

Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945).

Berlin (Germany)--Biography.

Berlin (Germany).

French literature--Translations into English.

French literature.

Genre:

Autobiographies.

Physical Description:

xiii, 269 pages : illustrations ; 22 cm

Edition:

First Atria Books hardcover edition.

Place of Publication:

New York : Atria Books, 2019.

Language Note:

Translated from the French.

Summary:

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.

Notes:

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

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

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

Local Notes:

Athenaeum copy: In memory of Irvin J. Borowsky from the fund provided by Laurie Wagman.

ISBN:

9781501199844

1501199846

OCLC:

1111789376