The Lost Bookshop meets The Tattooist of Auschwitz

Forty-four books bound in red, green or blue leather, each one no bigger than a pack of cards. Each one had a name embossed on its cover: Mina, Georgy, Samuel, Suzanne, Max…

Each one was unique, like the story inside it…

When journalist Anna types the last letter of the article she’s been writing she thinks that’s the end of the story. Of her story. Of Leon’s. Most importantly, of the children’s whose lives had been devastated 80 years before. But little does she know, the journey is just beginning.

Léon Fortel, the latest in a long line of Fortel bookbinders, has been dedicated to a craft that dates back centuries – lovingly and painstakingly building whole universes out of paper and leather, and gold foil, before watching them leave his shop and make their way into the world. Now, though, the books are coming back. Pocket-sized, jewel-coloured and leather-bound. Forty-four stories. Forty-four lost childhoods. Crafted with the sole purpose of bringing them all together again, if that was in fact even possible after so long. The end is now in sight. The end of the journey of the books and the children inside them. The end of at least part of their suffering…

Cate Green grew up in Buckinghamshire and lived in Manchester and London before moving to France over twenty years ago. She now lives and writes just outside Lyon, France’s second city and gastronomic capital.

Her debut novel The Curious Kidnapping of Nora W was inspired by her late mother-in-law, a resilient and feisty Holocaust survivor who lived almost as long as Nora herself. It won the 2019 Exeter Novel Prize.

​Cate is a broadcast and print journalist and copywriter with over twenty years’ experience in international radio, television and corporate communications. When not writing or running around after her three daughters, she is often sampling food and wine with her husband, swimming lengths to make up for it, or getting lost in Venice.