BOOK REVIEW
The story of an architect in Paris during the German occupation of that city, when ordinary Parisians lived in fear for their lives. People were dragged from their homes during the night never to be seen again. Those most at risk were citizens of Jewish extraction or those suspected of hiding them.
When Lucien Bernard, an architect with no fondness for Jews is offered a dangerous but lucrative offer of work, he reluctantly accepts because he needs the money. He is commissioned to design an undetectable hiding place in a certain apartment. Thus he embarks on a course where he walks a very delicate line between two worlds and finds he has strength, bravery and compassion he had not realized
The author, Charles Belfoure is an architect and in this, his first work of fiction, he uses his knowledge of architecture as a base for each of the hiding places he devises. The other basic fact is that during the war, his Polish mother has been forced into a labour camp producing war materials for the Nazis. When it was realised she could speak fluent German she was given the job as a translator for a contractor. This took her away from the daily possibility of death and starvation.
This is a gripping novel – believable,, well structured and thought provoking with a surprising twist at the end
Paris