The Ventriloquists
A Novel
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4.8 • 4 Ratings
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
“[A] remarkable saga.... Engrossing.” —Booklist, starred review
In this triumphant debut inspired by true events, a ragtag gang of journalists and resistance fighters risk everything for an elaborate scheme to undermine the Reich.
The Nazis stole their voices. But they would not be silenced.
Brussels, 1943. Twelve-year-old street orphan Helene survives by living as a boy and selling copies of the country’s most popular newspaper, Le Soir, now turned into Nazi propaganda. Helene’s world changes when she befriends a rogue journalist, Marc Aubrion, who draws her into a secret network that publishes dissident underground newspapers.
The Nazis track down Aubrion’s team and give them an impossible choice: turn the resistance newspapers into a Nazi propaganda bomb that will sway public opinion against the Allies, or be killed. Faced with no decision at all, Aubrion has a brilliant idea. While pretending to do the Nazis’ bidding, they will instead publish a fake edition of Le Soir that pokes fun at Hitler and Stalin—daring to laugh in the face of their oppressors.
The ventriloquists have agreed to die for a joke, and they have only eighteen days to tell it.
Featuring an unforgettable cast of characters and stunning historical detail, E.R. Ramzipoor’s dazzling debut novel illuminates the extraordinary acts of courage by ordinary people forgotten by time. It is a moving and powerful ode to the importance of the written word and to the unlikely heroes who went to extreme lengths to orchestrate the most stunning feat of journalism in modern history.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Ramzipoor's magnetic debut, based on the true story of an intricate WWII propaganda scheme, takes place in the fall of 1943 in Nazi-occupied Belgium. Anticipating an Allied invasion, Gruppenf hrer August Wolff, head of Germany's new Ministry of Perception Management, plans an ambitious campaign to circulate information that's alleged to come from the Resistance but is really the product of his office. He rounds up four members of the underground group the Front de l'Ind pendance and orders them to publish an issue of its newspaper, La Libre Belgique, that looks and reads like other copies but portrays the Allies in an unflattering light. The leader of the quartet, Marc Aubrion, knows they will be executed at the end of the project, so he convinces them to die for the cause: they will secretly and concurrently create a black propaganda version of the collaborationist paper Le Soir, to poke fun at the Nazis and give Belgians a much-needed psychological boost. To assist his team prostitute Lada Tarcovich, editor Theo Mullier, and professor Martin Victor Aubrion recruits a local teenager called Gamin, an expert at newspaper distribution and arson. Over 18 jam-packed days that end with a big bang, the lives of all the members of the group will be changed. Sprawling and ambitious, with crisp pacing and fully realized characters, this will fascinate anyone looking for an unusual, enthralling war story.
