From the internationally bestselling author of The Club comes a gripping historical novel of
love and betrayal set in wartime Berlin In 1942 Friedrich an even-keeled but unworldly young
man arrives in Berlin from bucolic Switzerland with dreams of becoming an artist. At a life
drawing class he is hypnotized by the beautiful model Kristin who soon becomes his energetic
yet enigmatic guide to the bustling and cosmopolitan city. Kristin teaches the nai¿ve Friedrich
how to take care of himself in a city filled with danger and brings him to an underground jazz
club where they drink cognac dance and kiss. The war feels far away to Friedrich as he falls
in love with Kristin the pair cocooned inside their palatial rooms at the Grand Hotel where
even Champagne and fresh fruit can be obtained thanks to the black market. But as the months
pass the mood in the city darkens yet further with the Nazi Party tightening their hold on
everyday life of all Berliners terrorizing anyone who might be disloyal to the Reich.
Kristin's loyalties are unclear and she is not everything she seems as his realizes when one
frightening day she comes back to Friedrich's hotel suite in tears battered and bruised. She
tells him an astonishing secret: that her real name is Stella and that she is Jewish passing
for Aryan. Fritz comforts her but he soon realizes that Stella's control of the situation is
rapidly slipping out of her grasp and that the Gestapo have an impossible power over her. As
Friedrich confronts Stella's unimaginable choices he finds himself woefully unprepared for the
history he is living through. Based in part on a real historical character Stella sets a
tortured love story against the backdrop of wartime Berlin and powerfully explores questions
of naivete¿ young love betrayal and the horrors of history.
