About this Event
Occupied Paris, 1942. When the Nazis arrest her family, an eleven-year-old Jewish girl runs to the only person she trusts: her piano teacher, secretly a member of the French Resistance.
Internationally-bestselling author Heather Morris joins this year's Walter Scott Prize winner Alice Jolly to discuss bringing lives caught in the darkest chapters of twentieth-century history out of the shadows. How do you transform real suffering into fiction? What happens when the historical record falls silent - and imagination must take over?
From the streets of occupied Paris to the clinics of wartime Vienna, Morris and Jolly explore ordinary people facing extraordinary danger. They discuss the research, imagination and moral responsibility involved in writing about real suffering - and fiction's power to restore the individuals hidden behind the vastness of history.
Heather Morris is the internationally-bestselling author of The Tattooist of Auschwitz, Cilka’s Journey, Three Sisters and Sisters Under the Rising Sun. Her books have sold more than 19 million copies worldwide and have been translated into more than 50 languages. The Tattooist of Auschwitz became one of the bestselling books of the twenty-first century and was adapted for television in 2024. Her new novel The Piano Teacher of Montparnasse, published by Firefinch on 22 October, is inspired by real people and events in occupied Paris. Born in New Zealand, she now lives in Australia.
Alice Jolly is an award-winning British novelist, playwright and memoirist whose work explores hidden histories, displacement and survival. Her books include Dead Babies and Seaside Towns, Mary Ann Sate, Imbecile and The Matchbox Girl, inspired by the victims of Nazi medicine in wartime Vienna and winner of the 2026 Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction. Her honours also include the PEN/Ackerley Prize, an O. Henry Prize and the V. S. Pritchett Memorial Prize, with longlistings for the Ondaatje and Rathbones Folio Prizes.
The discussion will be followed by an audience Q&A and book signing.
This event runs from 6pm to 7pm.
Venue: Level 6 Auditorium, Foyles, 107 Charing Cross Road WC2H 0DT*
*Please note that the Level 6 Auditorium is fully accessible from the Ground floor lifts.
Event venue & nearby stays
Foyles, 107 Charing Cross Road, London, United Kingdom
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