Papa Goes To War

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • ONE OF TIME MAGAZINE’S 100 BEST YA BOOKS OF ALL TIME The extraordinary, beloved novel about the ability of books to feed the soul even in the darkest of times. When Death has a story to tell, you listen. It is 1939. Nazi Germany. The country is holding its breath. Death has never been busier, and will become busier still. Liesel Meminger is a foster girl living outside of Munich, who scratches out a meager existence for herself by stealing when she encounters something she can’t resist–books. With the help of her accordion-playing foster father, she learns to read and shares her stolen books with her neighbors during bombing raids as well as with the Jewish man hidden in her basement. In superbly crafted writing that burns with intensity, award-winning author Markus Zusak, author of I Am the Messenger, has given us one of the most enduring stories of our time. “The kind of book that can be life-changing.” —The New York Times “Deserves a place on the same shelf with The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank.” —USA Today DON’T MISS BRIDGE OF CLAY, MARKUS ZUSAK’S FIRST NOVEL SINCE THE BOOK THIEF.

This historical narrative follows the lives of a young couple separated by the upheavals of World War II. In May 1940, Jan van Houten, a Dutch journalist working in London, joins the press office of the Dutch government now exiled in England. When bombing raids over London force his wife Marie and infant daughter to leave the city, the couple write daily letters to express their love and commitment to each other. Jan's letters vividly describe life during the Blitz, and the travails of a government-in-exile. Their correspondence resumes when, in September 1944, Jan is asked to organize press censorship in a recently liberated area of The Netherlands. Here he is eyewitness to historic events such as the aftermath of the allied forces' failed attempt to secure a crucial bridge across the Rhine-a defeat that delays the country's liberation by eight long months. Written by Jan and Marie's daughter Thérèse, Papa's War, is based primarily on Jan's letters backed by diaries, Marie's letters, and historical research. It paints a compelling picture of life in wartime England and postwar Holland. Its publication coincides with the 70th anniversary of the Netherlands' liberation from Germany on May 5, 1945.

Much of my childhood memories prevail in my mind. I remember every daunting occurrence that restricted or spoiled my youthful enjoyment. It could be because my early upbringing in Germany was during the worst of times in the last century, the last World War. That wartime was so testing that a small child like me could mature faster to withstand the challenges of staying alive. I survived the brutal war in the caring hands of Mama as a refugee with hunger, sickness, and ever-changing natural hardships. My memories go back to my Papa, a high-ranking Nazi officer who had no respect for his wife and his little girl; my brother, who was born a Hitler baby and whom Papa cherished; Irmgard, Mama's Jewish girlfriend that she hid from the Nazi's, including from Papa; my loving Grandpa and his discomforting second wife, who lived on a beautiful farm bordering a green forest close to where my aunt and cousins lived. The war fragmented us apart. I consider it a miracle to have lived and grown through that brutal war, surviving to tell the story to the present generation. My journey to America was paved by the outcome of the war itself. Leaving my memories behind, I entered into a new world with my loving husband beside me. I thrived and climbed mountains to succeed to make all things possible. It made me become the person I am today.

*NOW A NETFLIX LIMITED SERIES—from producer and director Shawn Levy (Stranger Things) starring Mark Ruffalo, Hugh Laurie, and newcomer Aria Mia Loberti* Winner of the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award finalist, the beloved instant New York Times bestseller and New York Times Book Review Top 10 Book about a blind French girl and a German boy whose paths collide in occupied France as both try to survive the devastation of World War II. Marie-Laure lives with her father in Paris near the Museum of Natural History where he works as the master of its thousands of locks. When she is six, Marie-Laure goes blind and her father builds a perfect miniature of their neighborhood so she can memorize it by touch and navigate her way home. When she is twelve, the Nazis occupy Paris, and father and daughter flee to the walled citadel of Saint-Malo, where Marie-Laure’s reclusive great uncle lives in a tall house by the sea. With them they carry what might be the museum’s most valuable and dangerous jewel. In a mining town in Germany, the orphan Werner grows up with his younger sister, enchanted by a crude radio they find. Werner becomes an expert at building and fixing these crucial new instruments, a talent that wins him a place at a brutal academy for Hitler Youth, then a special assignment to track the Resistance. More and more aware of the human cost of his intelligence, Werner travels through the heart of the war and, finally, into Saint-Malo, where his story and Marie-Laure’s converge. Doerr’s “stunning sense of physical detail and gorgeous metaphors” (San Francisco Chronicle) are dazzling. Deftly interweaving the lives of Marie-Laure and Werner, he illuminates the ways, against all odds, people try to be good to one another. Ten years in the writing, All the Light We Cannot See is a magnificent, deeply moving novel from a writer “whose sentences never fail to thrill” (Los Angeles Times).

Explores the experiences of children (now men and women in their fifties and sixties) who grew up during World War II, in the context of developmental psychology, and argues that the war left an indelible imprint on them, not only in childhood but in adulthood as well.