City of Women by David Gillham is a gripping tale of life in Berlin at the height of the Second World War. In the very darkest hour, who do you trust, who do you love, and who can be saved? It is 1943 - the height of the Second World War. With the men taken by the army, Berlin has become a city of women. And while her husband fights on the Eastern Front, Sigrid Schröder is, for all intents and purposes, the model soldier's wife: she goes to work every day, does as much with her rations as she can, and dutifully cares for her meddling mother-in-law. But behind this façade is an entirely different Sigrid, a woman who dreams of her former Jewish lover, who is now lost in the chaos of the war.Sigrid's tedious existence is turned upside-down when she finds herself hiding a mother and her two young daughters: could they be her lover's family? Now she must make terrifying choices that could cost her everything.'Gillham's Berlin is a terrified city, where nobody dare speak the truth and the smallest decision can cost you your life. A terrifically tense first novel' The Times'In this moving and masterful debut, David Gillham brings war-torn Berlin to life and reveals the extraordinary mettle of women tested to their limits and beyond. Powerful and piercingly real. You won't soon forget these characters' Paula McLain, New York Times bestselling author of The Paris Wife'David Gillham's excellent new novel, City of Women, is built on one of the most extraordinary and faithful recreations of a time in history - Berlin in World War II - that I've ever read' Alan FurstDavid Gillham lives with his family in western Massachusetts.
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Review:
Amazon Best Books of the Month, August 2012: While the world hardly lacks for novels about WWII, David R. Gillham’s City of Women is extraordinary for what it does not do. It does not detail the events or imagined conversations of Hitler’s Reich, and it has not a single scene of life in the death camps. Instead, it chronicles-–in detail so specific that it’s mesmerizing, but not so obviously researched as to be annoying-–life for “ordinary” Berliners at a time that was anything but. Through Heroine Sigrid Schroder, a German wife drawn into an affair with a Jew, Gillham shows us a world in which not all Germans are bad, not all Jews are victims, and loyalty is a fiction, the grimmest of fairy tales. -–Sara Nelson
About the Author:
David R. Gillham is the New York Times-bestselling author of City of Women. He spent more than a decade in the book business. He lives with his family in western Massachusetts and is currently working on his second novel.
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- PublisherPenguin Books
- Publication date2013
- ISBN 10 0241962234
- ISBN 13 9780241962237
- BindingPaperback
- Number of pages389
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