A Jewish Girl in Paris: The heart-breaking and uplifting novel, inspired by an incredible true story

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Inspired by true events and set against the backdrop of the Second World War, Melanie Levensohn's A Jewish Girl in Paris is a powerful novel about forbidden love, adapted from a translation by Jamie Lee Searle. 'In this vivid, affecting novel of intertwined destinies and the enduring power of love against the bleakest odds, Levensohn weaves a tale saturated with historical accuracy and yet surprisingly intimate. A Jewish Girl in Paris delivers romance and intrigue to spare, but the novel's real power lies in its portrayal of how deeply and sometimes mysteriously we can find ourselves connected to the past, and to each other.' - Paula Mc Lain, New York Times bestselling author of The Paris Wife and When the Stars Go Dark Paris, 1940, a city under German occupation. A young Jewish girl, Judith, meets a young man, the son of a wealthy banker and Nazi sympathizer - his family will never approve of the girl he has fallen in love with. As the Germans impose more and more restrictions on Jewish Parisians, the couple secretly plan to flee the country. But before they can make their escape, Judith disappears . . . Montreal, 1982. Shortly before his death, Lica Grunberg confesses to his daughter, that she has an older half-sister, Judith. Lica escaped the Nazis but lost all contact with his first-born daughter. His daughter promises to find the sister she never knew. The search languishes for years, until Jacobina is spurred on by her young friend Beatrice. Soon the two women discover a dark family secret, stretching over two continents and six decades, that will change their lives forever . . .

Melanie Levensohn was born in 1970 near Frankfurt, Germany, and studied international relations and literature in France and Chile. She earned her master's degree from the Institut d'Etudes Politiques (Sciences Po) in Paris. She later worked as a spokesperson for the World Health Organization in Geneva, Switzerland, and travelled to the most complex political hotspots around the world. She reported from Liberia during the civil war in 2003 and was based in Amman, Jordan, as a UN spokesperson during the Iraq war. From 2006-13 Melanie worked as a communications and media expert at the World Bank in Washington, D.C., where she managed corporate external relations for the Caribbean region with a special focus on reconstruction and development in Haiti after the devastating earthquake in 2010. She now lives in Geneva.