'In this vivid, affecting novel of intertwined destinies and the enduring power of love against the bleakest odds, Levensohn weaves a tale saturated with historical accuracy and yet surprisingly intimate. A Jewish Girl in Paris delivers romance and intrigue to spare, but the novel's real power lies in its portrayal of how deeply and sometimes mysteriously we can find ourselves connected to the past, and to each other.' - Paula Mc Lain, New York Times bestselling author of The Paris Wife and When the Stars Go Dark Paris, 1940, a city under German occupation. A young Jewish girl, Judith, meets a young man, the son of a wealthy banker and Nazi sympathizer - his family will never approve of the girl he has fallen in love with. As the Germans impose more and more restrictions on Jewish Parisians, the couple secretly plan to flee the country. But before they can make their escape, Judith disappears . . . Montreal, 1982. Shortly before his death, Lica Grunberg confesses to his daughter, that she has an older half-sister, Judith. Lica escaped the Nazis but lost all contact with his first-born daughter. His daughter promises to find the sister she never knew. The search languishes for years, until Jacobina is spurred on by her young friend Beatrice. Soon the two women discover a dark family secret, stretching over two continents and six decades, that will change their lives forever . . . Inspired by true events and set against the backdrop of the Second World War, Melanie Levensohn's A Jewish Girl in Paris is a powerful novel about forbidden love, adapted from a translation by Jamie Lee Searle.

BY THE WINNER OF THE 2021 NOBEL PRIZE IN LITERATURE SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2021 ORWELL PRIZE FOR POLITICAL FICTION LONGLISTED FOR THE 2021 WALTER SCOTT PRIZE 'Riveting and heartbreaking ... A compelling novel, one that gathers close all those who were meant to be forgotten, and refuses their erasure' Maaza Mengiste, Guardian 'A brilliant and important book for our times, by a wondrous writer' Philippe Sands, New Statesman, Books of the Year _______________ While he was still a little boy, Ilyas was stolen from his parents by the German colonial troops. After years away, fighting in a war against his own people, he returns to his village to find his parents gone, and his sister Afiya given away. Another young man returns at the same time. Hamza was not stolen for the war, but sold into it; he has grown up at the right hand of an officer whose protection has marked him life. With nothing but the clothes on his back, he seeks only work and security - and the love of the beautiful Afiya. As fate knots these young people together, as they live and work and fall in love, the shadow of a new war on another continent lengthens and darkens, ready to snatch them up and carry them away... _______________ 'One of the world's most prominent postcolonial writers ... He has consistently and with great compassion penetrated the effects of colonialism in East Africa and its effects on the lives of uprooted and migrating individuals' Anders Olsson, chairman of the Nobel Committee 'In book after book, he guides us through seismic historic moments and devastating societal ruptures while gently outlining what it is that keeps those families, friendships and loving spaces intact, if not fully whole' Maaza Mengiste 'Rarely in a lifetime can you open a book and find that reading it encapsulates the enchanting qualities of a love affair ... One scarcely dares breathe while reading it for fear of breaking the enchantment' The Times

As the bombs began to fall, the book club kept their hopes alive...

London, 1938. Bookseller Gertie Bingham is facing difficult times, having just lost her beloved husband, Harry, and with a lingering sadness at never having been able to have a child of her own. Struggling to face running the bookshop she and Harry opened together, Gertie is preparing to sell up and move away when she is asked if she would be willing to take in a young Jewish refugee from Germany. Gertie is unsure and when sullen teenager Hedy Fischer arrives, Gertie fears she has nothing left to give the troubled girl.

But when the German bombers come and the lights go out over London, Gertie and Hedy realise that joining forces will make them stronger, and that books have the power to bring young and old together and unite a community in need in its darkest hour...