THE TIMES NON-FICTION RECOMMENDED READ

'Chillingly relevant' DAILY MAIL

'Evocative, assiduously researched ... one girl's wartime escape [and] a brutal reckoning with Vichy France's wilful complicity in wartime atrocities' SUNDAY TIMES

'Meticulously researched with an inimitable richness, depth and levity' NEW STATESMAN

'A deeply researched and evocative true story' ANNE SEBBA

Ninette Dreyfus was a cosseted scion of one of France's most prominent Jewish families - a cousin to Albert Einstein and family friend to Colette. But when the Second World War broke out and the Germans occupied Paris, the fall was dramatic. Realising that her fate would be transformed, the teenager soon found herself fleeing the capital for the South, only to then fall prey to the Vichy regime. In fear for her life at the hands of the Nazis and their French collaborators, she became somebody else.

Woven together from Ninette's own diaries and interviews with author John Jay before she died, NINETTE'S WAR traces the frailty of national and personal unity through the eyes of a young woman, in compelling and unforgettable detail.

THE TIMES NON-FICTION RECOMMENDED READ

'Chillingly relevant' DAILY MAIL

'Evocative, assiduously researched ... one girl's wartime escape [and] a brutal reckoning with Vichy France's wilful complicity in wartime atrocities' SUNDAY TIMES

'Meticulously researched with an inimitable richness, depth and levity' NEW STATESMAN

'A deeply researched and evocative true story' ANNE SEBBA

Ninette Dreyfus was a cosseted scion of one of France's most prominent Jewish families - a cousin to Albert Einstein and family friend to Colette. But when the Second World War broke out and the Germans occupied Paris, the fall was dramatic. Realising that her fate would be transformed, the teenager soon found herself fleeing the capital for the South, only to then fall prey to the Vichy regime. In fear for her life at the hands of the Nazis and their French collaborators, she became somebody else.

Woven together from Ninette's own diaries and interviews with author John Jay before she died, NINETTE'S WAR traces the frailty of national and personal unity through the eyes of a young woman, in compelling and unforgettable detail.

Constructed through diary entries and conversations writer John Jay had with the protagonist before she died, Ninette's War charts her high society family's fall from grace as they grapple with the hostility of their country - a France that had welcomed previous generations with open arms as the first European country to emancipate its Jewish people.

Ninette's testimony is compelling, heart wrenching and sincere as she chronicles her family's slow realisation of antisemitism and Nazi-collaboration from the Vichy government - led by former first world war hero Philippe Pétain, as he works to brutalise and legislate Jews out to the margins of society and towards death through Nazi rhetoric. Tracing the frailty of national pride through the eyes of a young girl, this is Ninette's War told in heart-breaking detail.