33 Place Brugmann

An outstanding debut novel set in a Beaux Arts apartment house in Brussels on the eve of Nazi occupation during World War II. Charlotte Sauvin, an art student living in apartment 4L, knows the building and its residents intimately—the light on the floors, the voices in the stairwell, and her dear friend Julian Raphaël across the hall. When the Raphaëls suddenly disappear, leaving behind only an empty space where their priceless art collection once hung, Charlotte's familiar world begins to fracture. As German occupation becomes reality, the residents' lives grow increasingly intertwined. Charlotte's godmother Masha, a seamstress living upstairs, pursues a risky affair with a wartime associate of Colonel Warlemont. When a Nazi functionary with interest in the Raphaëls moves into the building, trust becomes a matter of survival. Faced with a cruel choice between submission and resistance, each resident discovers they are not who they believed themselves to be. The novel explores what matters most when confronted with great threat, told through the singular voices of the building's accidental community.