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Les Parisiennes

Anne Sebba examines how Parisian women navigated occupation—resisting, collaborating, and surviving.

Les Parisiennes book cover
Author
Anne Sebba
Publisher
Weidenfeld & Nicolson
Price
£9.99 (softback)
ISBN
9781780226613
Published
2016

Les Parisiennes by Anne Sebba

Anne Sebba’s meticulously researched study follows the women of Paris through occupation. She portrays resistors and couriers, black marketeers and collaborators, socialites and shop girls—each making fraught choices amid hunger, Milice terror, and Nazi exploitation. Interviews and archives reveal couture houses entertaining Germans while others forged documents or ferried fugitives.

Sebba withholds judgement, letting testimonies evoke survival’s moral ambiguities. The result is a panoramic, empathetic portrait of a city at war, from glamorous salons to overcrowded prisons and deportation convoys.

Weidenfeld & Nicolson. £9.99 (softback). ISBN 9781780226613.