One morning in late August 1944, as World War II draws to a close, Coco Chanel is arrested in her suite at the Ritz Hotel in Paris on charges of treason to France, stemming from her romance with a Nazi spy.
Her two-hour interrogation at the Prefecture of Police offers a gripping battle of wits between the famously acerbic designer and a hostile soldier of the Resistance, who attacks her as a German collaborator. Flashback scenes of Chanel’s life during the Paris Occupation explore her motivations and her betrayal of her Jewish partners and a close Jewish friend.
Though Chanel epitomizes the treachery of France during World War II, at heart this is a novel about the choices one woman made when the stakes were the highest and the perilous, even deadly, consequences
to those around her. In today’s world, a time when antisemitism and hatred in general have exploded anew, it’s a cautionary tale about the necessity of standing against evil when it stares you – seductively – in the face.

Fiction
Coco At The Ritz
- From the Publisher
September 1, 2021
Discussion Questions

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