The Librarian of Burned Books
This absorbing novel, set before and during World War II, follows three points of view: Althea, an American novelist visiting Berlin on a cultural exchange in 1933; Hannah, a German Jewish resistance fighter living in Paris in 1936; and Vivian, a Manhattan socialite fighting in 1944 to defend the Armed Service Editions program (which produced small, portable editions of American bestsellers for soldiers to carry with them into combat) from censorship by conservative Congressmen. The overarching theme is the importance of protecting books – and the free flow of information they represent – from the control of authoritarian governments.
The lives of the three women are intertwined, as each grapples with the Nazi regime’s obsession with purging German culture of “impure” writings. Sheltered Althea is an awestruck beneficiary of Goebbels’ propaganda campaign; her part of the narrative follows her frustratingly slow realization that she has been chosen not because of her bestselling novel, but because the party sees her as a pawn who can convince her own government to remain neutral in the coming war. We join expatriate Hannah four years later, after her passionate friendship with Althea has ended disastrously and she has been forced to flee Berlin for the dubious safety of Paris, where antisemitism is more covert but no less vicious than in Germany. Vivian’s role in the story comes later, but it will be clear to readers early on how their experiences will become important to her campaign to fight authoritarian bigotry on her own home turf.
All three women are linked by the conviction that books are worth fighting, and even dying for. Labuskes’ deft interweaving of the three women’s narratives makes this novel both entertaining and thought-provoking. The political wrangling over which novels are “appropriate” for patriotic soldiers to read overseas is a little-known historical controversy that seems equally vital and urgent today.
