A prize-winning novel based on the life of Charlotte Salomon: a "searing portrait of a brilliant artist" who persisted despite the horrors of WWII (Kirkus).
Obsessed with art, and with living, Charlotte Salomon attended school in Germany until she was forced to flee. In France, Charlotte was interned in work camp which she narrowly escaped. She then spent the next two years in almost total solitude, creating a series of artworks—images, words, even musical scores—that tell her life story.
Before Charlotte was killed in Auschwitz at the age of twenty-six, she entrusted her life's work to a friend, who kept it safe until peacetime. In Charlotte, David Foenkinos—with passion, life, humor, and intelligent observation—has written his own utterly original tribute to Charlotte Salomon's tragic life and transcendent art. First published to critical acclaim in France, Foenkinos's hauntingly redemptive novel is masterfully translated by Sam Taylor.
Winner of the Prix Renaudot and the Prix Goncourt des Lycéens