The team at Haverhill Library share some of their favourite stories of occupation. Browse our staff picks and pick up a copy from your local library.
Want more suggested books? Take a look at our recommendations or explore more of the National Year of Reading campaign.
Alone in Berlin
Hans Fallada
Berlin, 1940, and the city is filled with fear. At the house on 55 Jablonski Strasse, its various occupants try to live under Nazi rule in their different ways: the bullying Hitler loyalists the Persickes, the retired judge Fromm and the unassuming couple Otto and Anna Quangel.
Then the Quangels receive the news that their beloved son has been killed fighting in France. Shocked out of their quiet existence, they begin a silent campaign of defiance, and a deadly game of cat and mouse develops between the Quangels and the ambitious Gestapo inspector Escherich.
When petty criminals Kluge and Borkhausen also become involved, deception, betrayal and murder ensue, tightening the noose around the Quangels’ necks…
All the Light We Cannot See
Anthony Doerr
For Marie-Laure, blind since the age of six, the world is full of mazes.
The miniature of a Paris neighbourhood, made by her father to teach her the way home. The microscopic layers within the invaluable diamond that her father guards in the Museum of Natural History. The walled city by the sea, where father and daughter take refuge when the Nazis invade Paris.
And a future which draws her ever closer to Werner, a German orphan, destined to labour in the mines until a broken radio fills his life with possibility and brings him to the notice of the Hitler Youth.
Suite Française
Irene Nemirovsky
Set during the year that France fell to the Nazis, Suite Française falls into two parts. The first is a brilliant depiction of a group of Parisians as they flee the Nazi invasion; the second follows the inhabitants of a small rural community under occupation.
Suite Française is a novel that teems with wonderful characters struggling with the new regime. However, amidst the mess of defeat, and all the hypocrisy and compromise, there is hope. True nobility and love exist, but often in surprising places.
The Invisible Bridge
Julie Orringer
Paris, 1937. Andras Lévi, an architecture student, has arrived from Budapest with a scholarship, a single suitcase, and a mysterious letter he has promised to deliver to Clara Morgenstern a young widow living in the city. When Andras meets Clara he is drawn deeply into her extraordinary and secret life, just as Europe’s unfolding tragedy sends them both into a state of terrifying uncertainty.
From a remote Hungarian village to the grand opera houses of Budapest and Paris, from the despair of Carpathian winter to an unimaginable life in forced labour camps and beyond, The Invisible Bridge tells the story of a marriage tested by disaster and of a family, threatened with annihilation, bound by love and history.
Crooked Cross
Sally Carson
Lexa has many admirers, but her heart belongs to Moritz, who is initially welcomed by her parents and two brothers, Helmy and Erich. As the year progresses, Lexa enjoys skiing, swimming and going to parties with Moritz and her friends. But little by little Moritz is excluded from the pool, the library, and eventually his own home.
As support for the Nazi Party grows rapidly across the country, Lexa’s own brothers, now fervent members of the Nazi Youth, turn against Moritz. Under immense pressure and desperate to be together, Lexa and Moritz have to meet in secret.
By midsummer, the once close-knit Kluger family are now fractured by irreconcilable beliefs and differing loyalties. When legislation strips the town’s Jewish citizens of their rights and their livelihoods, Lexa remains steadfast in her determination to stay true to Moritz.
Lithuanian 
English 
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Portuguese 
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