33 Place Brugmann

(Paperback)

Available Formats

Publishing Details

Classifications

Physical Properties

Description

An unforgettable historical debut set in Second World War Brussels: exploring love, resistance and courage in all their forms 1939. Art student Charlotte Sauvin and her father wake up in their apartment at 33 Place Brugmann to discover that their closest neighbours and friends the Raphal family on the fourth floor, and Russian seamstress Masha on the fifth have vanished overnight without a word. While the Raphals and Masha are flung on their own adventures across the continent from occupied Paris to Blitz London, where they reinvent themselves as refugees, nurses, soldiers, heroes Charlotte and the rest of her neighbours at Place Brugmann have their own choices to make in a city cast under the deep shadow of occupation. Over the course of the war, every member of this accidental community will discover that they are not the person they believed themselves to be. And when tested, each will confront the truth about what, and who, matters to them the most. Uplifting, sweeping and full of unforgettable characters, 33 Place Brugmann is a novel about beauty, family, friendship and home: and how the courage to resist can be found in the most surprising places.

Reviews

A work of art - stylish, charming and magnetic. There is a crisp immediacy in the writing so that the eve of a world war is now, here, close and not in the sepia colored past -- LEILA ABOULELA

Author Bio

Alice Austen is an award-winning screenwriter, producer, and playwright. A graduate of Harvard Law School, she co-founded the Harvard Human Rights Journal, and studied creative writing under Seamus Heaney. She was the first American to receive a fellowship to the European Court of Human Rights. She has been awarded a Royal Court Residency; and her work has been honoured with an Independent Spirit Award, a Joseph Jefferson Award Nomination and a Terrence McNally Award Premiere Five. Austen has two films going into production, one with Alfonso Cuaron, and the other with Steven Soderbergh. 33 Place Brugmann is her debut novel.