By Joy Sable. She then found out that she was the second Melanie Levensohn. She gave it to Pascal who kept it in his office. I opened it and it was extremely moving to see. For Levensohn, the mystery of the fate of her namesake spurred her to write her first novel. I studied literature but I never became a writer. When I read this folder and learned about Melanie Levensohn, the inner urge to do something became very intense and I had to write something.
Then I started thinking about how to weave these real facts into a fictitious story using the world I know and working it into a plot that would be an interesting read. I was also very worried about writing the historical part because I had no idea about anything of the daily life, what was going on in Paris in those days. I was worried that I would write something wrong so I had to do huge research and dive deep into that time period.
I had to read books β not just the historic facts but also the little daily life facts: what did they have to eat, what was the price of a baguette, how was the life of the Jewish population step by step restrained and what exactly happened to them. I tried to write in English but the German was just pouring out of me.
I started the book in and it took me about two years to write it. It was published in and subsequently it was published in Italian and then in French. My big dream was to get it out in English, so my husband, who is American, can finally read the book, and his remaining family too. So it is a very big moment for me that the book is coming out in English. It is memorial to all victims of the atrocities of the Nazis and to the brave people who dedicated their lives to trying to find lost people and reconnecting them to their families.
There is so much amazing work going on. It was very interesting to learn, to go to the Holocaust Museum to see the work that has been done and the people who have these archives. You give them a name and they try to search and help youβ¦they are amazing. She also worked as a communications expert at the World Bank in Washington and once owned a vineyard in California β all experiences which have found their way, to a greater or lesser extent, into her writing.
