Stories of everyday lives affected by World War II

 

Suite Française
by Irene Nemirovksy

The epic novel of life under Nazi occupation, discovered 62 years after the author’s tragic death at Auschwitz.

 

 

 

English Patient
by Michael Ondaatje

Four damaged lives intersect in an Italian villa at the end of World War II: the exhausted nurse; the maimed thief, the wary sapper, and the English patient – the nameless, burned man who lies in an upstairs room.

 

 

 

Memory Wall: Stories
by Anthony Doerr

Stories revolving around the presence and persistence of memory, including “Afterword,” about a woman in her final days whose seizures take her back to her youth in a Nazi-era Hamburg orphanage.

 

 

 

Miracle at St. Anna
by James McBride

The story of four black American soldiers lost in the mountains of Italy after a terrible battle, trying to figure out who among the Italian peasants and freedom fighters they can trust, and not trusting each other or their white commanders.

 

 

Town of Evening Calm: Country of Cherry Blossoms
by Fumiyo Kouno

Looks at life in postwar Hiroshima through the eyes of an average woman living in 1955 Japan.