‘You or I would walk barefoot in the snow to save an unknown comrade from death. We have learned to kill...the traitors’ It is the winter of 1942. Juliette Noël moves silently through Occupied France, trudging across the snowy countryside, working for the Resistance, always just one move ahead of the Gestapo. The painter Alexis Slavsky must conceal his Jewish blood. As he drifts-from Montparnasse to Lyons to the Alps—the precariousness of his Bohemian life becomes intensified by the exigencies of war. Russian-born Louise has survived Nazi interrogation and escaped from a concentration camp. Now she lies low in a ‘safe’ house, waiting to rejoin the maquis. First published illegally by Underground presses, these extraordinary stories of the French Resistance are a moving and shocking testament to the courage of those caught up by the nightmare of war.
Author
Elsa Yur'evna Triolet (September 24 1896 - June 16, 1970) was a French writer. Born Ella Kagan (Russian: Элла Каган) into a Jewish family of a lawyer and a music teacher in Moscow, she and her sister, Lilya Brik received excellent educations; they were able to speak fluent German and French and play the piano. Elsa graduated from the Moscow Institute of Architecture. Elsa enjoyed poetry and in 1915 befriended the aspiring futurist poet and graphic artist Vladimir Mayakovsky. When she invited him home, the poet fell madly in love with her older sister Lilya, who was married to Osip Brik. Elsa was the first to translate Mayakovsky's poetry (as well as volumes of other Russian-language poetry) to French. In 1918, at the outset of Russian Civil War, Elsa married the French cavalry officer André Triolet and emigrated to France, but for years in her letters to Lilya Elsa admitted to being heartbroken. Later she divorced Triolet. In the early 1920s, Elsa described her visit to Tahiti in her letters to Victor Shklovsky, who subsequently showed them to Maxim Gorky. Gorky suggested that the author should consider a literary career. The 1925 book In Tahiti, written in Russian, was based on these letters. In 1928 Elsa met French writer Louis Aragon. They married and stayed together for 42 years. She influenced Aragon to join the French Communist Party. Triolet and Aragon fought in the French Resistance. In 1944 Triolet was the first woman to be awarded the Prix Goncourt. She died, aged 73, in Moulin de Villeneuve, Saint-Arnoult-en-Yvelines, France of a heart attack. In 2010, La Poste, the French post office, issued three stamps honoring Triolet.
