Download Les Parisiennes: How the Women of Paris Lived, Loved, and Died Under Nazi Occupation AudioBook Free
New York Times best-selling creator Anne Sebba explores a disastrous period in Paris' record and says the experiences of how women survived - or didn't - through the Nazi occupation. Paris in the 1940s was a place of fear, vitality, aggression, courage, deprivation, and secrets. During the profession, the swastika flew from the Eiffel Tower and risk lurked on every spot. While Parisian men were either fighting at the front end or captured and pressured to work in German factories, the ladies of Paris were left behind, where they might come face-to-face with the German conquerors on a regular basis, as waitresses, shop assistants, or wives and mothers increasingly eager to find food to feed their own families as food cravings became part of everyday life. Once the Nazis and the puppet Vichy routine began rounding up Jews to dispatch east to focus camps, the entire horror of the warfare was brought home, and the decision between collaboration and level of resistance became inescapable. Sebba targets the role of women, many of whom confronted life and death decisions every day. After the war concluded, there would be a brutal settling of accounts between those who made peace with or, worse, helped the occupiers, and the ones who fought the Nazis at all they could. This program includes an interview with the writer and her editor. The audiobook is read by Polly Stone, narrator of The Nightingale and Sarah's Key. In a very starred Collection Journal review of The Nightingale, Stone was applauded for her "impeccable narration that brings...wartime France to life with a distinctive and memorable set of voices that could keep listeners returning to get more detailed."
