Synopses & Reviews
Like Tatiana de Rosnay's
Sarah's Key and Jenna Blum's
Those Who Save Us,
All the Light There Was is an unforgettable portrait of human lives caught in the crosswinds of history.
From a writer praised for her "haunting and convincing" prose (Joyce Carol Oates, The New Yorker), comes a lyrical, finely wrought novel about family loyalty, secret love, and the many faces of resistance.
On the day the Nazis march down the Rue de Belleville, Maral Pegorian is fourteen years old, living with her family, who, along with many other Armenians who survived the genocide in their homeland, have come to Paris to start over. The adults immediately set about gathering food and provisions, bracing for the deprivation they know all too well; but Maral, her brother Missak, and her beloved, Zaven, are spurred to action of another sort, finding secret and not-so-secret ways to resist their oppressors. Only when Zaven flees with his brother Barkev to avoid conscription does Maral realize that the Occupation is not simply a temporary outrage to be endured. After many fraught months, just one brother returns, changing the contours of Maral's world completely.
Review
"Nancy Kricorian is a gem, her work subtle and nuanced and moving. All the Light There Was brings Nazi-occupied Paris vividly, tragically, and heroically to life." Chris Bohjalian, author of The Sandcastle Girls and Midwives
Review
"Moving. . . With a bittersweet love story, examples of everyday heroism, and a community refusing to give in to tyrants, Kricorian's work sheds even more light on the German occupation of France."
—Library Journal
"The first-person narrative nails the blend of daily detail and political history. . . . An important addition to the WWII fiction shelves, this is bound to spark discussion."
—Booklist
"Nancy Kricorian is a gem, her work subtle and nuanced and moving. All the Light There Was brings Nazi-occupied Paris vividly, tragically, and heroically to life."
—Chris Bohjalian, author of The Sandcastle Girls and Midwives
Review
"
All the Light There Was offers a vivid picture of life for a minority family in occupied Paris, and author Kricorian effortlessly takes the reader from one year to the next….A pleasure to read."
—Historical Novel Society
"Beautifully conjured… Kricorians touch is light, but the residual impact of war is nonetheless palpable."
—Eleanor J. Bader, In These Times
"Immersive as quicksand."
—Portland Book Review
"Moving. . . With a bittersweet love story, examples of everyday heroism, and a community refusing to give in to tyrants, Kricorian's work sheds even more light on the German occupation of France."
—Library Journal
"The first-person narrative nails the blend of daily detail and political history. . . . An important addition to the WWII fiction shelves, this is bound to spark discussion."
—Booklist
"Solid and touching. Readers are instantly drawn into this world, full of hardships of wartime occupation and references to the Armenian genocide of the previous generation. Thanks to multifaceted characters, Kricorians treatment of family dynamics and love under extreme circumstances creates an emotional read." --Publishers Weekly
"Nancy Kricorian is a gem, her work subtle and nuanced and moving. All the Light There Was brings Nazi-occupied Paris vividly, tragically, and heroically to life."
—Chris Bohjalian, author of The Sandcastle Girls and Midwives "Love blooms just as war tears two people apart…Kricorians rendering makes good on its promise of drama [and]….her heroines resilience is exciting."—The New York Times
Review
PRAISE FOR THOSE WHO SAVE US
"Jenna Blum's accomplished first novel, Those Who Save Us, is both vast and intimate in its reach . . . Utterly believable . . .An absorbing tale of two women's struggles with the burdens and responsibilities of remembrance."-THE BOSTON GLOBE
"The book's power . . . [lies] in examining the emotional and moral gray area between heroism and collaboration . . .Those Who Save Us bursts with provocative questions about the ambiguous possibilities of culpability."-SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE
Review
ADVANCE PRAISE FORTHOSE WHO SAVE US
“In her compelling first novel, Jenna Blum forces a moral re-evaluation on her characters and on the reader. Cagily plotted between past and present, guilt and innocence, Those Who Save Us is a moving, unsentimental page turner.” —ALISON LESLIE GOLD, a u t h o r o f F I E T S VASE and ANNEFRANK REMEMBERED ( w i t h M I E P G I E S )
Synopsis
All the Light There Was is the story of an Armenian family's struggle to survive the Nazi occupation of Paris in the 1940s--a lyrical, finely wrought tale of loyalty, love, and the many faces of resistance.
On the day the Nazis march down the rue de Belleville, fourteen-year-old Maral Pegorian is living with her family in Paris; like many other Armenians who survived the genocide in their homeland, they have come to Paris to build a new life. The adults immediately set about gathering food and provisions, bracing for the deprivation they know all too well. But the children--Maral, her brother Missak, and their close friend Zaven--are spurred to action of another sort, finding secret and not-so-secret ways to resist their oppressors. Only when Zaven flees with his brother Barkev to avoid conscription does Maral realize that the Occupation is not simply a temporary outrage to be endured. After many fraught months, just one brother returns, changing the contours of Maral's world completely.
Like Tatiana de Rosnay's Sarah's Key and Jenna Blum's Those Who Save Us, All the Light There Was is an unforgettable portrait of lives caught in the crosswinds of history.
Synopsis
Set amid the Armenian community in newly occupied Paris, All the Light There Was is a lyrical, finely wrought story about family loyalty, secret love, the many faces of oppression—and the many faces of resistance.
Synopsis
For fifty years, Anna Schlemmer has refused to talk about her life in Germany during World War II. Her daughter, Trudy, was only three when she and her mother were liberated by an American soldier and went to live with him in Minnesota. Trudy's sole evidence of the past is an old photograph: a family portrait showing Anna, Trudy, and a Nazi officer, the Obersturmfuhrer of Buchenwald.
Driven by the guilt of her heritage, Trudy, now a professor of German history, begins investigating the past and finally unearths the dramatic and heartbreaking truth of her mother's life.
Combining a passionate, doomed love story, a vivid evocation of life during the war, and a poignant mother/daughter drama, Those Who Save Us is a profound exploration of what we endure to survive and the legacy of shame.
About the Author
Nancy Kricorian is the author of the novels Zabelle and Dreams of Bread and Fire, both published by Grove/Atlantic, and All the Light There Was, forthcoming from Houghton-Mifflin Harcourt. Kricorian grew up in the Armenian community of Watertown, Massachusetts, and earned her undergraduate degree in Comparative Literature at Dartmouth College; she spent the following year studying semiotics at the University of Paris-Jussieu. After completing a Master of Fine Arts in Poetry at Columbia University, Kricorian taught at Yale, Rutgers, Barnard and Queens Colleges. She subsequently worked for ten years as a literary scout for foreign publishers, and since 2003 has been on the staff of CODEPINK Women for Peace. She lives in New York City with her family.