National Network for Equitable Library Service

"A beautiful and important book" (The Independent) in the tradition of rediscovered works like Suite Française and The Nazi Officer's Wife, this is the remarkable and prize-winning memoir of a fearless Jewish woman whose beloved bookshop was destroyed during Kristallnacht, sending her on a harrowing fight for survival across wartime Europe. In 1921, Françoise Frenkel-a Jewish woman from Poland-fulfills a lifelong dream. She opens Berlin's first French-language bookshop, La Maison du Livre, attracting artists, diplomats, celebrities, and poets. The shop soon becomes a haven for intellectual exchange as Nazi ideology begins to poison the culturally rich city. But as time passes and politics darken, Frenkel's bookshop is frequently visited by police officers who confiscate her beloved books. Frenkel's dream finally shatters on Kristallnacht-The Night of Broken Glass-as Jewish shops and businesses, including La Maison du Livre, are destroyed. She flees to Paris where she witnesses countless horrors: children torn from their parents, mothers throwing themselves under buses, and worse. Secreted away from one safe house to the next, Frenkel survives at the heroic hands of strangers risking their lives to protect her. Originally published in 1945, and rediscovered nearly sixty years later in an attic, A Bookshop in Berlin is the remarkable tale of one woman whose passion for life and literature helps her survive history's darkest hours as well as a stunning testament to the resilience of the human spirit.