They are already well known, but the book gave birth to some of my thoughts. The author reminds us of those tragic facts. France wanted to forget about its anti-human past and thoroughly concealed it. The second parallel story is about an American journalist, Julia Jermond, who, writing an article about Vel’ d’Hiv’s roundup, found out many horrible details of this crime committed by French police. Almost all of them perished in concentration camps. In 1942, on the orders of German military authorities, French police brutally arrested all Jewish families in Paris. One story is about the tragedy of a Jewish girl named Sarah. However, from my standpoint, despite the fair critical comments (I don’t think it is necessary to list them), the novel deserves a rather high rating, and I will try to explain why.

It is necessary to admit that their opinions weren’t unfounded and most critical comments were fair. Most of them rated the book in four or five stars, but some of them calling the novel “mediocre” showed a lower rating – three stars. Writing about the fate of her country with a pitiless clarity, Tatiana de Rosnay offers us a brilliantly subtle, compelling portrait of France under occupation and reveals the taboos and denial surrounding this painful episode in French history.Īlmost a hundred readers published their reviews on Tatiana de Rosnay’s novel Sarah’s Key. As she probes into Sarah's past, she begins to question her own place in France and to reevaluate her marriage and her life. Julia finds herself compelled to retrace the girl's ordeal, from the terrible days spent shut in at the Vel' d'Hiv' to the camps and beyond. In the course of her investigation, she stumbles onto a trail of long-hidden family secrets that connects her to Sarah. Julia has lived in Paris for nearly twenty-five years, married a Frenchman, and she is shocked both by her ignorance about the event and the silence that still surrounds it. Paris, May 2002: On Vel' d'Hiv's sixtieth anniversary, Julia Jarmond, an American journalist, is asked by her Paris-based American magazine to write an article about this black day in France's past. She keeps the key, thinking that she will be back within a few hours.

but before the police come to take them, Sarah locks her younger brother, Michel, in their favorite hiding place, a cupboard in the family's apartment. Paris, July 1942: Ten-year-old Sarah is brutally arrested with her family in the Vel' d'Hiv' roundup, the most notorious act of French collaboration with the Nazis.

Sarah's Key by Tatiana de Rosnay