First published 2026
The Hotel Lutetia stands on Paris's Left Bank, where André Gide once lunched and James Joyce lived. In the 1930s, intellectuals fleeing Hitler gather in its rooms, hoping to form an alternative government. When the Nazis occupy Paris, the same hotel becomes German military intelligence headquarters, hunting enemies of the Reich. Three groups of people find their lives intertwined by this single location and the dark forces reshaping Europe. Political refugees who once plotted resistance now face deportation. German officers execute orders from elegant suites where artists once debated. Deportees return from concentration camps to find temporary shelter in rooms that housed their persecutors. Each group struggles to survive as history crashes around them. The hotel witnesses their desperate attempts to preserve humanity while ideology tears lives apart. Rogoyska follows these interconnected stories through occupation, resistance, and liberation, revealing how ordinary people navigate extraordinary circumstances when everything they know collapses.
Genres: history, 20th-century, world-war-ii, non-fiction, france
Vibes: intimate, suspenseful, thought-provoking
Tropes: enemies-to-lovers, found-family
Setting: Paris, Left Bank
Period: 1930s
368 pages · Hardcover · Allen Lane
Content warnings: violence, war