No Place to Lay One’s Head: Françoise Frenkel - Rilegato

'A lost classic of mysterious provenance, Frenkel's tale and prose is utterly compelling, at once painful and exquisite' -- Philippe Sands, author of East West Street

'Frenkel writes with a novelist's observing eye: her cool detachment in the heat of persecution and attempted flight brings both the bureaucratic and human cruelty of life under Nazi occupation into startling relief. Every dangerous detail, every helping hand is luminously present. This is a memoir that has the terrible precarity of lived experience. It's the real thing. I cried and still couldn't put it down' -- Lisa Appignanesi, author of Losing the Dead

'A bitter, beautiful and important book' --Robert Fisk

'Gripping' -- Telegraph, Books of the Year

'An astonishing memoir... as gripping as any thriller... stark and chilling... we owe [Frenkel] a huge debt of gratitude. In sharing her bitter taste of bitter history she has shown us the worst of humanity - but also the best' -- Sunday Times

'Terribly moving and terribly haunting... It's a surprisingly measured book about one woman's immeasurable sorrow that everyone should hold in their hands' -- Nicholas Shakespeare, Daily Telegraph (5 stars)

'Frenkel's book was a fortuitous find... an appealing style... a wild beauty to the prose... sharply specific... unbearably sad' -- Financial Times

'Had me screaming after the first chapter: let this be a thousand pages... Don't miss this remarkable gem' -- Jeffrey Archer, New Statesman

'A remarkable lost-then-found account that appears in English for the first time... It stands as both an illuminating depiction of wartime France and a gripping and affecting personal account of endurance and defiance... the reader roots for [Frenkel] every step of the way' -- Economist

'This account is particularly vital... riveting... Frenkel's portrait of a people she loved is a complex and unsettling view of humanity, in all its shifting shades' -- Spectator

'Tells of the writer's incredible escape from the Nazis' -- ELLE

'Just when it seems there is nothing else to be said on this subject, here is a book of compelling freshness' -- Literary Review

'A poignant love letter to literature, freedom and shared humanity, carrying its message of solace and encouragement both in and on its pages' --History Today

'Françoise Frenkel's memoir offers a reminder never to disdain jumble' -- Jewish Chronicle

'An important, shocking and haunting book - fragmentary, disturbing and dark, yet delicately and lightly written' -- The Lady (5 stars)

'The story told with such clarity, thanks to the seamless and skilful translation by Stephanie Smee, becomes a breathless account of all the people who take her in and help her survive in the darkest times' -- The Times of Israel

'Brimming with humanity... this curious, gripping, delicate yet commanding memoir... a voice that looks across cultures and faiths, races and historical moments, uniting all that is noblest into a quiet statement of perseverance, endurance, resilience' --Bookanista

Very little is known about Françoise Frenkel's life. She was born in Poland in 1889, and in 1921 set up the first French-language bookshop in Berlin with her husband. In 1939, she returned to Paris, and after the German invasion the following year fled to occupied Vichy. After several years in hiding, she made a desperate attempt to cross the border to Switzerland. Frenkel died in Nice in 1975. Her memoir, originally published in Geneva in 1945, was rediscovered in a flea market in 2010, republished in the original French and is now being translated and publishing in numerous languages for the first time.

Stephanie Smee is a translator of French adult and children's books into English. Her other languages include German, Italian and Swedish.