33 Place Brugmann

Delicate and devastating, disruptive and beautiful, 33 Place Brugmann follows the intertwined lives of the residents of one building in Brussels during Nazi occupation - both within their individual apartments, and also as they try to make their way in the rapidly changing and diminishing outside world. Not only I am filled with admiration for the skill and ambition of this book, I also adored it. It’s a celebration of love, art and human decency when everything is reduced to the basics

Rachel Joyce, author of The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry

Beautifully written and utterly absorbing. Full of memorable characters and devastating scenes, it is a master class in what the best of historical fiction can achieve.

Alice Jolly, author of The Matchbox Girl

33 Place Brugmann is set in the turmoil of the Nazi occupation of Belgium. Austen’s device of using one apartment building, its memorable tenants, and their individual transformations is brilliant. A compelling and beautiful read

Abraham Verghese, New York Times-bestselling author of The Covenant of Water

In 33 Place Brugmann, Alice Austen conjures war-tested, occupied Brussels with uncanny potency and precision. This is historical fiction at its immersive, absorbing best. A riveting and original debut from a writer to watch

Paula McLain, author of The Paris Wife

33 Place Brugmann is an achingly suspenseful historical novel, sad at moments, but always intriguing, with a complex cast of vivid and involving characters. Wonderful reading

Scott Turow, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Presumed Innocent

A work of art - stylish, charming and magnetic. There is a crisp immediacy in the writing so that the eve of a world war is now, here, close and not in the sepia colored past

Leila Aboulela, author of River Spirit

In 33 Place Brugmann, a seemingly ordinary apartment building in the heart of Brussels becomes a microcosm of a world on the brink of war. Through multiple perspectives, Alice Austen weaves an extraordinary tapestry of lives intertwined by fate, fear, and resilience as Europe teeters on the edge of chaos in 1939. Offering a fresh perspective on a much-written-about era, this profoundly moving novel demonstrates the power of storytelling to illuminate the darkest corners of history

Christina Baker Kline, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Orphan Train

33 Place Brugmann is a riveting portrait of community during a time when the very notion of community was under siege. A master of time and place, Austen has a historian’s grasp of detail and a storyteller’s command of suspense. This is a beautiful and important novel

Jessica Shattuck, author of Last House and The Women in the Castle

The plot will sweep you away

Today.com, Books we can't wait to read in 2025

Austen has composed a powerful historical novel, set just before and during the Nazi occupation. Beautifully written, the narrative stands as a great humanist statement

Literary Review

. Austen’s nimble debut follows this group’s fortunes through the Nazi invasion and occupation of Belgium . . . The elegant Brussels building becomes a poignant microcosm of wartime alliances and betrayals

Wall Street Journal