Sarah s key author biography outline

Sarah’s Key alternates between WWII Paris, with a young Jewish girl, Sarah, and a middle-aged journalist, Julia, living in Paris with her French husband and their daughter. Despite the decades between them, Julia discovers that her life links with Sarah’s in unexpected ways.

I love it when the stars align and the book announced for bookclub is one I’m already reading and nearly done with. My mom suggested Sarah’s Key book (after her bookclub read it) since I tend to like historical fiction, so I’d downloaded it and listened to it while I made batch after batch of lemon cream (what, you don’t think an audiobook is a good excuse for endless sweets making?).

sarah’s key by tatiana de rosnay

The story of Sarah’s Key switches between two story lines – one is Julia, a forty-year old journalist who moved to Paris after college, married a handsome, arrogant Frenchman and has lived there ever since. The other story is Sarah’s, a ten-year-old Jewish girl living in Paris with her family during WWII.

Sarah’s family is arrested by the French police, along with many other Jews, and taken to the Vélodrome d’Hiver outside the city where they are kept for a few days before they are shipped off to Auschwitz. History reports that none of the French Jews who went to Auschwitz ever came back; the only ones who lived are those very few who managed to escape before they arrived at Auschwitz. Which makes Julia frantic to determine whether or not Sarah’s family managed to escape.

And why does she care so much? Because the apartment she and her family are about to move into, a Paris apartment her in-laws have owned for decades and are currently remodeling, turns out to be the apartment Sarah’s family lived in until their arrest. Her in-laws moved in just days after the arrests, not knowing (although probably guessing) what had happened to its former occupants.

And so, having never heard of the r

I’m delighted, honored and enchantée to host Tatiana de Rosnay, author of Sarah’s Key (which has been translated into 38 languages) and who will publish her latest novel, The Other Story, on April 15, 2014.

Diana: The Other Story, like Sarah’s Key, deals with revealing a disturbing secret. Can you tell us a little bit about your interest in personal and national mysteries?

Tatiana de Rosnay: I find family secrets to be incredibly romanesque and inspiring. There is indeed a secret in every single one of my books.  I am however aware of the suffering and pain that longtime secrets can cause when they are finally revealed.

Diana: You were born to a French father from Mauritius, and an English mother born in Rome, giving you a wealth of nationalities.  How has the confluence of countries impacted your writing and language?

Tatiana de Rosnay: It’s true to say that because of my mixed heritage and the fact that so many different nationalities are the background to my family, this has given me the advantage of an open-minded culture and being able to read and write in two languages from very early on.

Diana: You write in The Other Story about Nicolas, the main character, “needing to turn away from his own story to spin another tale.” Does that idea resonate with your own work?

Tatiana de Rosnay: Yes, I’m not the kind of writer who talks about myself directly, but I like to start with something personal and then make it into someone else’s story which is exactly the case in this book.

Diana: Can you tell us a bit about your writing style? What are some rules you follow for your writing? Do you write an outline? Did you know the end of your novel before you got there? And what are you working on now?

Tatiana de Rosnay: I have been writing fiction since I was 11 years old so I guess you can say writing is part of my life. I work every morning and sometimes later into the afternoon. I edit myself ruthl

1. What did you know about France’s role in World War II — and the Vél d’Hiv round-up in par­tic­u­lar — before read­ing Sarah’s Key? How did this book teach you about, or change your impres­sion of, this impor­tant chap­ter in French his­to­ry? 2. is com­posed of two inter­weav­ing sto­ry lines: Sarah’s, in the past, and Julia’s quest in the present day. Dis­cuss the struc­ture and prose-style of each nar­ra­tive. Did you enjoy the alter­nat­ing sto­ries and time-frames? What are the strengths or draw­backs of this format? 

3. Per above: Which ​“voice” did you pre­fer: Sarah’s or Julia’s? Why? Is one more or less authen­tic than the oth­er? If you could meet either of the two char­ac­ters, which one would you choose? 

4. How does the apart­ment on la rue de Sain­tonge unite the past and present action — and all the char­ac­ters — in Sarah’s Key? In what ways is the apart­ment a char­ac­ter all its own in? 

5. What are the major themes of ?

6. de Rosnay’s nov­el is built around sev­er­al ​“key” secrets which Julia will unearth. Dis­cuss the ele­ment of mys­tery in these pages. What types of nar­ra­tive devices did the author use to keep the keep the read­er guessing? 

7. Were you sur­prised by what you learned about Sarah’s his­to­ry? Take a moment to dis­cuss your indi­vid­ual expec­ta­tions in read­ing Sarah’s Key. You may wish to ask the group for a show of hands. Who was sat­is­fied by the end of the book? Who still wants to know — or read — more? 

8. How do you imag­ine what hap­pens after the end of the nov­el? What do you think Julia’s life will be like now that she knows the truth about Sarah? What truths do you think she’ll learn about her self?

9. Among mod­ern Jews, there is a famil­iar mantra about the Holo­caust; they are taught, from a very young age, that they must ​“remem­ber and nev­er for­get” (as the inscrip­tio

French novel

For the film adaptation, see Sarah's Key.

Sarah's Key is a historical fiction novel by Franco-British author Tatiana de Rosnay, first published in French as Elle s'appelait Sarah in September 2006. Two main parallel plots are followed through the book. The first is that of ten-year-old Sarah Starzynski, a Jewish girl born in Paris, who is arrested with her parents during the Vel' d'Hiv Roundup. Before they go, she locks her four-year-old brother in a cupboard, thinking the family should be back in a few hours. The second plot follows Julia Jarmond, an American journalist living in Paris, who is asked to write an article in honour of the 60th anniversary of the roundup.

The book was rejected by more than 20 publishers before being published by Héloïse d'Ormesson, whom she had profiled in French Elle in 2005.

As of 2021, the novel has sold 11 million copies in 44 countries.

Plot

July 1942

The first plot follows the Starzynski family. On 16 July 1942, French police raided the Starzynski apartment in Paris, arresting ten-year-old Sarah and her parents. First, the family is sent to the Vélodrome d'Hiver, an enclosed stadium that housed a bicycling track for racing. The captors held more than 7,000 Jews, mostly women and children in the stadium, which was made to hold far fewer people, and they were eventually sent to Drancy, a refugee camp, to separate the men from the women and children and then later, they separated the mothers from the children. Later, the readers find out they were all sent to Auschwitz.

Sarah, now on her own, is still tormented by thoughts of her brother locked in the secret closet at home, and tries to escape with Rachel, another Jewish girl at the camp. They are caught, but the officer that catches them is a man that Sarah knows from her old life. She begs him to let her go to rescue her brother. He reluctantly helps them escape and even gives the two girls mone