Ninette's War

THE TIMES NON-FICTION RECOMMENDED READ

‘Evocative, assiduously researched … one girl’s wartime escape [and] a brutal reckoning with Vichy France’s wilful complicity in wartime atrocities’ SUNDAY TIMES

‘Meticulously researched with an inimitable richness, depth and levity’ NEW STATESMAN

‘A deeply researched and evocative true story’ ANNE SEBBA

Ninette Dreyfus was a cosseted scion of one of France’s most prominent Jewish families – a cousin to Albert Einstein and family friend to Colette. But when the Second World War broke out and the Germans occupied Paris, the fall was dramatic. Realising that her fate would be transformed, the teenager soon found herself fleeing the capital for the South, only to then fall prey to the Vichy regime. In fear for her life at the hands of the Nazis and their French collaborators, she became somebody else.

Woven together from Ninette’s own diaries and interviews with author John Jay before she died, NINETTE’S WAR traces the frailty of national and personal unity through the eyes of a young woman, in compelling and unforgettable detail.

Author Biography

John Jay is a former managing editor for business news at The Sunday Times. He is the author of Facing Fearful Odds: My Father’s Story of Captivity, Escape and Resistance 1940-1945; Ninette’s War is his third book. He lives in London with his family.