Kirsty grew up in northern New South Wales, Australia and has degrees in literature and communications. A country girl with wanderlust, her travels and studies have taken her around the globe.

About The Hidden Book: From the bestselling author of The Jade Lily comes a compelling novel based on a true story of a WWII European heirloom that brought down war criminals and travelled through history … to be found in an Australian country shed in 2019.

I write Historical Fiction and my latest book  focuses on a little-known true story from WW2. While I have written in this era, and around this topic in both The Song of the Jade Lily and The French Gift, each novel presents a fresh challenge. I never want to glorify or romanticise the horror of war. It took me four years to work out the best way to tell this particular tale.

In The Hidden Book, I wanted to honour the people involved with saving clandestine photos of Mauthausen that were used to convict Nazi war criminals. Part of that story is a secret photo album owned by Bogdan Ivanovic, originally from Zagreb. The book now resides at the Sydney Jewish Museum.

Nobody knows how Ivanovic came to own the album, only that it came to Australia via a relative in the 1970s. We do know that a Mauthausen local, Anna Pointner, hid thousands of photographs in the stone wall of her garden, and there is a memorial to her in the town.

As I write novels, I never lean too far into a real person’s story. As such, Lena, Roza, Mila and Nico are all entirely fictional. The clandestine photo album in my novel is an imagined album. I do feature real memorial sites and museums in this novel, but these too have been fictionalised for the purposes of the story.

My job in writing this book was to bring to life the horror, injustice and intolerance of the Nazi regime onto the page.

My starting point for this novel was the Sydney Jewish Museum. I honour all those people with a connection to the Holocaust. Of the real-life photo album the Museum says:

The shocking photographs within this album were taken by the officer in charge of the SS Erkennungdienst: the photographic laboratory and identification service. These photographs were taken with the order to record all prisoners’ identities upon arrival and to note all visits to the camp by dignitaries. Five copies were made of each photograph and distributed to the high-ranking SS officer Karl Schutz, and to the SS headquarters in Berlin, Oranienburg, Vienna and Linz.

There was, however, a prohibited sixth copy of each photograph printed by prisoners working in the lab, two of whom are identified as Antonio García Alonso and Francesco Boix Campo. Toward the end of the war, these prohibited images were smuggled out of Mauthausen by a communist network of young Spaniards in the false bottom of a food hamper. These images were later used in the prosecution of war crimes trials in Nuremberg in 1946, in which Francesco Boix Campo gave evidence.

We still cannot be entirely sure of how Ivanovic Bogdan came to be in contact with the syndicate who smuggled out the photographs. Regardless, his collection of photographs, hidden for over 70 years and donated to the Sydney Jewish Museum by Bogdan’s family, will be preserved as photographic evidence of the Holocaust and as a legacy to those who risked everything to reveal Nazi atrocities.

Unanswered questions are catnip to a novelist. The gap between the Mauthausen photo album being made and its journey to Australia is so large that I have completely fictionalised it. As with all my books, I’ve taken some liberties with the historical record and places, shifting events and combining others to serve the story. Some war timelines have been condensed or changed. Questions of war and conflict, unfortunately, reappear for every generation and we must listen, learn and lean into history to find new paths for reconciliation and peace.

Interlaced with the true story of Mauthausen is the story of Hannah. I’ve always wanted to write a coming-of-age tale for a contemporary woman, and this storyline grapples with questions of how to write and present history, how to be a student, a daughter, a mother and still have academic and professional goals that are never sidelined or minimised. There are questions I’ve often asked myself over the years as I’ve tried to squeeze every inch out of a very full but at times, very messy  life. Fiction is a great vehicle to throw questions of modern motherhood and generational trauma into the mix … and every reader will find their path to different answers. That is part of the magic of novels.

My work as a novelist is to hold space, ask why these horrors happened, and ask how we can ensure they never happen again. Wars persist, people can be monsters, but The Hidden Book is for the big-hearted, loving and kind. We can never have too much hope, or love, in the world.

The post How We Can Learn From Our History Through Storytelling appeared first on The Nerd Daily.

We chat with Kirsty Manning about her latest book release, along with writing, research, book recommendations, and more!

Hi, Kirsty! Can you tell our readers a bit about yourself?

I live between Melbourne and a sleepy seaside village where I’m renovating an old shack alongside my family. My weeks are pretty busy in the city running around with three teenagers and trying to write during the day. My husband I are co-owners of Bellota Wine Bar and Prince Wine Store.

I adore beautiful food and wine—even better if someone cooks for me! In my spare time I like long walks with friends and swimming in the ocean.

Prior to writing I was a book editor and then freelance journalist. (Also, a pretty terrible waitress.) I have degrees in Literature and MA in communications.

As the year draws to a close, how has 2021 been for you?

Strange! I live in Melbourne, Victoria and we’ve had lockdown for 265 days. I know!

As a writer I can socially isolate like a boss, but with my husband and three teenage children all working from home for the majority of that time, I’ve had to do things a little differently.

I’ve loved (for the most part) this close time with my family—and time for reflection. It’s been a year of review with ups and downs.

That said, 2022 can’t come soon enough …

When did you first discover your love for writing?

Primary School. My Mum recently sent me the first cover blurb I wrote. I always enjoyed creative writing through school, but didn’t study it and embark on fiction as a career until I was forty.

Quick lightning round! Tell us the first book you ever remember reading, the one that made you want to become an author, and one that you can’t stop thinking about!

Oscar and Lucinda by Peter Carey. I read it in my last year of high school and there is a scene of a glass structure floating down the river. I could smell the eucalyptus, longing and desire.

Your new novel, The French Gift, is out now! If you could only describe it in five words, what would they be?

Lush, surprising, full of hope

What can readers expect?

At the moment women are crying out for our voices to be heard. For too long, history has been written and recorded by men. War stories, are typically told from male perspectives. How many movies and books feature men as the lead: Gallipoli, Saving Private Ryan, Good Morning Vietnam etc, etc

But here’s the thing: women have always been strong. Women have always linked arms and dragged their loved ones into better conditions, to safety, to the future.

In my heroine, Josephine, I wanted to capture some of that resilience and inspiration of wartime women. To honour the women who were forced to work in atrocious conditions, and whose stories have largely been forgotten.

Where did the inspiration for The French Gift come from?

I read a lot of non-fiction because I love to explore forgotten pockets of history in my novels. A few years ago, a single paragraph in the excellent non-fiction book The Riviera Set by Mary S. Lovell lit my imagination. Lovell described a decadent party on the Côte D’Azure arranged by a famous hostess, where one of the guests is (faux) murdered and the local police were roped in as part of the game.

What fun, I thought! What if I write a book about a decadent murder party … and then it goes wrong.

But I also wanted to write a story inspired by the ordeal of women in WW2 who were forced into labour in factories. We know so little about their history—women’s stories of war—and I stumbled across a translated version of a memoir by Agnès Humbert.

Can you tell us a bit about the challenges you faced while writing and how you were able to overcome them?

It’s always a huge challenge to balance the nuances of a real person and real places with the needs of a fictional character to serve the story. I always work with historians and translators for authenticity. I have readers that check for any sensitivities as I want to honour and celebrate the inspiration behind my novels.

The other challenge in a dual timeframe books is marrying the contemporary story with the historical plot. It’s a bit like putting together a jigsaw with no idea of the shape it is meant to be. It all ties together in the end.

As a historical fiction writer, can you tell us about your research process? Particularly for this novel?

I took copious notes right through Résistance—(expertly translated into English by Barbara Mellor) to get inside the head of Agnès Humbert.  To try understand a woman that was part of the Resistance, member of the subterfuge group Cercle Alain-Fournier, co-founded the clandestine newspaper Résistance, was tried, sentenced and imprisoned for espionage for five years at Cherche-Midi, de la Santé, Fresnes and Anrath prisons and endured forced labour at the Phrix Rayon Factory.

I like to read primary source material, but also government records, prison records, court documents etc. There’s a list of some of the resources at the back of every book for people to follow up areas that interest them.

Unlike my heroine Josephine, Agnès Humbert was a key figure in the liberation, and stayed in Germany to assist the American troops hunt Nazis. Her story does not end at the Phrix Rayon Factory, for at 51 years of age she returned to a liberated France and to work and writing. She was also a devoted mother, daughter and wife.

Agnès Humbert was an extraordinary woman. It has long been my quest in historical fiction to draw attention to forgotten pockets of history. Agnes Humbert’s English translator– Barbara Mellor–have captured with accuracy and visceral reality a type of reportage a female first-person experience of the Résistance and shined a spotlight on the forced labour factories used in WW2 that have long been overlooked in history.

What’s the best and the worst writing advice you have received?

Worst: you should workshop your ideas with a lot of people before you set pen to paper. Ideas by committee never work

Best: Keep writing. You can’t edit nothing.

What’s next for you?

A historical mystery series, set in Paris.

Lastly, what have your favourite reads of 2021 been?

Sarah Bailey’s The Housemate, Jane Harper’s The Survivors

Will you be picking up The French Gift? Tell us in the comments below!

The post Q&A: Kirsty Manning, Author of ‘The French Gift’ appeared first on The Nerd Daily.

Synopsis

Why would someone bury a bucket of precious jewels and gemstones and never return?  

Present Day. When respected American jewelry historian, Kate Kirby, receives a call about the Cheapside jewels, she knows she’s on the brink of the experience of a lifetime. 

But the trip to London forces Kate to explore secrets that have long been buried by her own family. Back in Boston, Kate has uncovered a series of sketches in her great-grandmother’s papers linking her suffragette great-grandmother Essie to the Cheapside collection. Could these sketches hold the key to Essie’s secret life in Edwardian London? 

In the summer of 1912, impoverished Irish immigrant Essie Murphy happens to be visiting her brother when a workman’s pickaxe strikes through the floor of an old tenement house in Cheapside, near St. Paul’s Cathedral in London. The workmen uncover a stash of treasure—from Ottoman pendants to Elizabethan and Jacobean gems—and then the finds disappear again! Could these jewels—one in particular—change the fortunes of Essie and her sisters? 

Together with photographer Marcus Holt, Kate Kirby chases the history of the Cheapside gems and jewels, especially the story of a small diamond champlevé enamel ring. Soon, everything Kate believes about her family, gemology, and herself will be threatened. 

Based on a fascinating true story, The Lost Jewels is a riveting historical fiction novel that will captivate readers from the beginning to the unforgettable, surprising end. 

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Intrigued? Visit the HarperCollins website to find where you can order a copy!

The post Excerpt: The Lost Jewels by Kirsty Manning appeared first on The Nerd Daily.