Author | Charles Belfoure |
---|---|
Country | United States |
Language | English |
Genre | Historical, thriller |
Publisher | Sourcebooks Landmark |
Publication date | October 8, 2013 |
Media type | Print, e-book, audiobook |
Pages | 384 pages |
ISBN | 1402284314 |
The Paris Architect is a 2013 novel by Charles Belfoure and the author's debut in fiction writing. Published by Sourcebooks Landmark, it follows the story of French architect Lucien Bernard, who is paid to create temporary hiding places for Jews in Nazi-occupied Paris. The book reached The New York Times best seller list in July 2015.
An architect specializing in historic preservation, Charles Belfoure had written several non-fiction books on architecture, including works on the history of American banks and rowhouse architecture in Baltimore before writing The Paris Architect. He decided to try writing fiction, thinking it might be a break from his everyday work. A direct inspiration was his discovery that during the reign of Elizabeth I in England special spaces were designed in houses as temporary hiding places for repressed Catholic priests. [1]
The novel was first published in hardcover in the United States on October 8, 2013. Unabridged audible version narrated by Mark Bramhall was released that same year. [2] A paperback edition was released in the U.S. on July 15, 2014. The Paris Architect was released in the United Kingdom by Allison & Busby on August 5, 2015 [3] and in Australia by Pan Macmillan Australia on January 31, 2017. [4]
The book was translated and published in several languages, including Italian (2014), [5] Hebrew (2014), [6] Hungarian (2015), [7] Turkish (2015), [8] Portuguese (2015), [9] Bulgarian (2015), [10] Polish (2015), [11] Norwegian (2016), [12] Romanian (2017) [13] and Czech (2019). [14]
This section needs expansion. You can help by adding to it. (September 2015) |
During World War II Lucien Bernard, an architect living in Paris, France, is offered a large fee to design hiding places for Jews being hunted by the Nazis. He desperately needs the money to make a living, although he knows that if caught, he will most likely be killed.
The book received generally favorable reviews. It was presented by USA Today in the “New Voices” section and was an American Booksellers Association Indie Pick in October 2013. [1] [15]
Malcolm Gladwell of The Guardian chose The Paris Architect his favorite book of 2013, calling it “a beautiful and elegant account of an ordinary man's unexpected and reluctant descent into heroism during the second world war”. [16]
Vicki Briner of Library Journal wrote that Belfoure's portrayal of Vichy France “is both disturbing and captivating, and his beautiful tale demonstrates that while human beings are capable of great atrocities, they have a capacity for tremendous acts of courage as well”. [17] New York Post picked the novel as a “must-read”. [18]
The Paris Architect was among finalists of the 2015 International Dublin Literary Award [19] and was listed The New York Times best seller list in an e-book category in July 2015. [20] It was also ranked #102 on Best-Selling Books Top 150 list of USA Today on December 6, 2015. [21]
Until the first half of 2020, The Paris Architect has sold nearly 400,000 copies. [22]
In July 2016 it was announced that StudioCanal and The Picture Company acquired the rights to film The Paris Architect. Chris Salmanpour was hired to adapt the script. [23]
The New York Times Best Seller list is widely considered the preeminent list of best-selling books in the United States. Since October 12, 1931, The New York Times Book Review has published the list weekly. In the 21st century, it has evolved into multiple lists, grouped by genre and format, including fiction and nonfiction, hardcover, paperback and electronic.
Zadie Smith FRSL is an English novelist, essayist, and short-story writer. Her debut novel, White Teeth (2000), immediately became a best-seller and won a number of awards. She has been a tenured professor in the Creative Writing faculty of New York University since September 2010.
Colm Tóibín is an Irish novelist, short story writer, essayist, journalist, critic, playwright and poet.
Edward Rutherfurd is a pen name for Francis Edward Wintle. He is best known as a writer of epic historical novels that span long periods of history but are set in particular places. His debut novel, Sarum, set the pattern for his work with a ten-thousand-year storyline.
Lavie Tidhar is an Israeli-born writer, working across multiple genres. He has lived in the United Kingdom and South Africa for long periods of time, as well as Laos and Vanuatu. As of 2013, Tidhar lives in London. His novel Osama won the 2012 World Fantasy Award for Best Novel, beating Stephen King's 11/22/63 and George R. R. Martin's A Dance with Dragons. His novel A Man Lies Dreaming won the £5000 Jerwood Fiction Uncovered Prize, for Best British Fiction, in 2015. He won the John W. Campbell Memorial Award for Best Science Fiction Novel in 2017, for Central Station.
Elif Shafak is a Turkish-British novelist, essayist, public speaker, political scientist and activist.
Castle is an American crime mystery/comedy-drama television series that aired on ABC for a total of eight seasons from March 9, 2009, to May 16, 2016. The series was produced jointly by Beacon Pictures and ABC Studios.
Yann Martel, is a Canadian author who wrote the Man Booker Prize–winning novel Life of Pi, an international bestseller published in more than 50 territories. It has sold more than 12 million copies worldwide and spent more than a year on the bestseller lists of the New York Times and The Globe and Mail, among many other best-selling lists. Life of Pi was adapted for a movie directed by Ang Lee, garnering four Oscars including Best Director and winning the Golden Globe Award for Best Original Score.
Anthony Marra is an American fiction writer. Marra has won numerous awards for his short stories, as well as his first novel, A Constellation of Vital Phenomena, which was a New York Times best seller.
Cylin Busby is an author and screenwriter, known for the best-selling true crime memoir, The Year We Disappeared, written with her father John Busby.
Ellah Wakatama, OBE, Hon. FRSL, is Editor-at-Large at Canongate Books, a senior Research Fellow at Manchester University and Chair of the AKO Caine Prize for African Writing. She was the founding Publishing Director of the Indigo Press. A London-based editor and critic, she was on the judging panel of the 2017 International Dublin Literary Award and the 2015 Man Booker Prize. In 2016, she was Visiting Professor & Global Intercultural Scholar at Goshen College, Indiana, and was Guest Master for the 2016 Gabriel Garcia Marquez Foundation international journalism fellowship in Cartagena, Colombia. The former deputy editor of Granta magazine, she was senior editor at Jonathan Cape, Random House and assistant editor at Penguin. She is series editor of the Kwani? Manuscript Project and the editor of the anthologies Africa39 and Safe House: Explorations in Creative Nonfiction.
Susanna Kearsley is a New York Times best-selling Canadian novelist of historical fiction and mystery, as well as thrillers under the pen name Emma Cole. In 2014, she received Romance Writers of America's RITA Award for Best Paranormal Romance for The Firebird.
Chinelo Okparanta(listen) is a Nigerian-American novelist and short-story writer. She was born in Port Harcourt, Nigeria, where she was raised until the age of 10, when she emigrated to the United States with her family.
Colleen Hoover is an American author who primarily writes novels in the romance and young adult fiction genres. She is best known for her 2016 romance novel It Ends with Us. Many of her works were self-published before being picked up by a publishing house. Hoover sold about 20 million books as of October 2022.
Charles Belfoure is an American writer, architect and historian specializing in historic preservation, author of several histories and fiction works, including The New York Times best-selling novel The Paris Architect.
Margaret Yvonne Busby,, Hon. FRSL, also known as Nana Akua Ackon, is a Ghanaian-born publisher, editor, writer and broadcaster, resident in the UK. She was Britain's youngest and first black female book publisher when she and Clive Allison (1944–2011) co-founded the London-based publishing house Allison and Busby in the 1960s. She edited the anthology Daughters of Africa (1992), and its 2019 follow-up New Daughters of Africa. She is a recipient of the Benson Medal from the Royal Society of Literature. In 2020 she was voted one of the "100 Great Black Britons". In 2021, she was honoured with the London Book Fair Lifetime Achievement Award.
Amie Kaufman is a New York Times bestselling and internationally bestselling Australian author of science fiction and fantasy for young adults. She is known for the Starbound Trilogy and Unearthed, which she co-authored with Meagan Spooner; for her series The Illuminae Files, co-authored with Jay Kristoff; and for her solo series, Elementals. Her books have been published in over 35 countries.
Yewande Omotoso is a South African-based novelist, architect and designer, who was born in Barbados and grew up in Nigeria. She is the daughter of Nigerian writer Kole Omotoso, and the sister of filmmaker Akin Omotoso. She currently lives in Johannesburg. Her two published novels have earned her considerable attention, including winning the South African Literary Award for First-Time Published Author, being shortlisted for the South African Sunday Times Fiction Prize, the M-Net Literary Awards 2012, and the 2013 Etisalat Prize for Literature, and being longlisted for the 2017 Bailey's Women's Prize for Fiction.
Raquel Jaramillo Palacio is an American author and graphic designer. She is the author of several novels for children, including the best-selling Wonder, which was adapted into a 2017 film starring Julia Roberts and Owen Wilson.
Yvvette Edwards FRSL is a British novelist born in London, England, of Caribbean heritage. Her first novel, A Cupboard Full of Coats, was published in 2011 to much acclaim and prize nominations that included the Man Booker Prize longlist and the Commonwealth Book Prize shortlist. Edwards followed this debut work five years later with The Mother (2016), a novel that "reinforces her accomplishment". She is a contributor to the 2019 anthology New Daughters of Africa, edited by Margaret Busby.