EVENT: The Bookstore of the Exiles

Description

Look forward to a reading with Uwe Neumahr on 13.11.2026 at your Hugendubel Bookstore Berlin Steglitz! Info about the book:
Two booksellers in occupied Paris: A story of love and literature
They are literary legends. Adrienne Monnier and Sylvia Beach shaped literary Paris with their neighboring bookstores for decades. But in 1940, with the German occupation, everything changes for them too. From the literary oasis in the heart of the city, it becomes a refuge for German-Jewish exiles and a place of resistance. Uwe Neumahr tells the story of this great couple and their friends in his moving book. In the wild twenties, "Shakespeare and Company" and "The House of Book Lovers," the bookstores of Sylvia Beach and Adrienne Monnier, were meeting places for writers, intellectuals, and artists. Here, the avant-garde gathers, from James Joyce and Ernest Hemingway to Pablo Picasso to Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir. But with the German invasion of France in May 1940, literature also comes under threat. Among the occupiers is Ernst Jünger, while the American-Jewish writer Gertrude Stein aligns herself with the new regime in Vichy. Adrienne Monnier and Sylvia Beach do everything to save their friends Walter Benjamin, Gisèle Freund, Siegfried Kracauer, and others. Until Sylvia Beach herself is picked up by the Gestapo and taken to an internment camp. Based on archival studies, Uwe Neumahr depicts this dramatic chapter from occupied Paris for the first time. It is a story of great literature and its creation, of persecution, violence, and humanity, and of the love of two truly extraordinary women. Info about the author: Uwe Neumahr holds a doctorate in Romance and German studies. He works as a literary agent and freelance author and has published non-fiction books on the Italian Renaissance and the Spanish Golden Age. "The Castle of Writers" was on the Spiegel bestseller list for many weeks and has been translated into six languages. Experience an exciting evening with bestselling author and historian Uwe Neumahr, who will speak together with the renowned journalist and literary critic Maike Albath about this fascinating chapter of European literature and contemporary history. Get your tickets now!

Highlights

• Reading with Uwe Neumahr on 13.11.2026
• Topic: Booksellers in occupied Paris
• Location: Hugendubel Bookstore Berlin Steglitz

General Information

The reading with Uwe Neumahr takes place at the Hugendubel Bookstore in Berlin Steglitz. It highlights the moving story of Adrienne Monnier and Sylvia Beach, who created literary refuges for exiles during the German occupation in Paris.

Location

Schloßstraße 109/110a, 12163 Berlin, Germany

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