“Alice Austen uses her con­sid­er­able gifts to remind us that the past and the present are more con­nect­ed than we wish to believe, and that vig­i­lance, loy­al­ty and art hold the key to sur­vival. This is a beau­ti­ful and deeply engag­ing nov­el.” — Ann Patch­ett, #1 New York Times best­selling author of Tom Lake

An out­stand­ing debut nov­el – a love sto­ry, mys­tery, and philo­soph­i­cal puz­zle, told in the sin­gu­lar voic­es of the res­i­dents of a Beaux Arts apart­ment house in Bel­gium dur­ing World War II.

On the eve of the Nazi occu­pa­tion, in the heart of Brus­sels, life for the res­i­dents of 33 Place Brug­mann is about to change forever.

Char­lotte Sauvin, an art stu­dent raised by her beloved archi­tect father in apart­ment 4L, knows all the details of the build­ing and its peo­ple: how light falls on wood floors and voic­es echo off the mar­ble stair­case, the dis­tinct knock of her dear friend, Julian Raphaël, the son of the art deal­er’s fam­i­ly across the hall. Then the Raphaëls dis­ap­pear, leav­ing every­thing behind but their price­less art col­lec­tion, which has sim­ply vanished.

All else that’s famil­iar frac­tures when whis­pers of Ger­man occu­pa­tion become real­i­ty, and the lives of the res­i­dents grow increas­ing­ly inter­twined. Char­lot­te’s god­moth­er Masha, a beau­ti­ful seam­stress liv­ing upstairs, deep­ens her risky affair with a wartime com­pa­tri­ot of Colonel War­lemont in 3L – a man far more cal­cu­lat­ing than his neigh­bors believe. When a Nazi func­tionary with an inter­est in the Raphaëls moves into the build­ing, know­ing who can and can­not be trust­ed becomes a mat­ter of life and death.

In the face of their per­ilous new real­i­ty, every mem­ber of this acci­den­tal com­mu­ni­ty will dis­cov­er they are not the per­son they believed them­self to be. When con­front­ed with a cru­el choice – sub­mit to the regime or risk their lives to save one anoth­er – each learns the truth about what, and who, mat­ters to them the most.

A propul­sive and exquis­ite­ly writ­ten tour de force, 33 Place Brug­mann cham­pi­ons the restora­tive pow­er of love, courage, and art in times of great threat.