Reading with Uwe Neumahr: Die Buchhandlung der Exilanten

(in German)

About the book:

Two booksellers in occupied Paris: they are literary legends. Adrienne Monnier and Sylvia Beach shaped literary Paris for decades with their neighbouring bookshops. But in 1940, with the German occupation, everything changed for them too. The literary oasis in the heart of the city became a refuge for German-Jewish exiles and a place of resistance.

In his moving book, Uwe Neumahr tells the story of this remarkable pair and their friends.

In the Roaring Twenties, ‘Shakespeare and Company’ and ‘The House of Book Lovers’, the bookshops run by Sylvia Beach and Adrienne Monnier, were meeting places for writers, intellectuals and artists. This is where the avant-garde gathered, from James Joyce and Ernest Hemingway to Pablo Picasso, Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir.

However, with the German invasion of France in May 1940, literature too came under threat. Among the occupiers was Ernst Jünger, whilst the American-Jewish writer Gertrude Stein aligned herself with the new regime in Vichy. Adrienne Monnier and Sylvia Beach did everything in their power to save their friends Walter Benjamin, Gisèle Freund, Siegfried Kracauer and many others. Until Sylvia Beach herself was taken away by the Gestapo and sent to an internment camp.

Drawing on archival research, Uwe Neumahr recounts this dramatic chapter from occupied Paris for the first time. It is a story of great literature and its creation, of persecution, violence and humanity, and of the love between two utterly extraordinary women.

About the author:

Uwe Neumahr holds a PhD in Romance and Germanic Studies. He works as a literary agent and freelance writer and has made a name for himself with non-fiction works on, amongst other topics, the Italian Renaissance and the Spanish Golden Age.

*Das Schloss der Schriftsteller* spent many weeks on the *Spiegel* bestseller list and has been translated into six languages.

Join us for an exciting evening with bestselling author and historian Uwe Neumahr, who will be discussing this fascinating chapter in European literary and contemporary history alongside the renowned journalist and literary critic Maike Albath.