Wed, Oct 28  •  4:30pm

Paris on the Brink

Mark Braude and Jane Rogoyska

Join the authors as they discuss these non-fiction titles on the City of Lights

Non-Fiction
Conversation
Ticket or Pass Required
Passes available
Paris on the Brink
Paris on the Brink

Wed, Oct 28  •  4:30pm

Paris on the Brink

Mark Braude and Jane Rogoyska

Join the authors as they discuss these non-fiction titles on the City of Lights

Conversation
Non-Fiction
Ticket or Pass Required
Passes available

About

Paris in the years surrounding WWII was a city alive with art, ideas and possibility—but beneath the glamour, tensions were mounting. Join Mark Braude, author of The Typewriter and the Guillotine, and Jane Rogoyska, author of Hotel Exile, for a fascinating conversation about the writers, artists and émigrés who found themselves in Paris as Europe hurtled toward war. Together, they’ll explore a city on the brink: a place of creativity and refuge, but also growing fear, political extremism and uncertainty—and the remarkable people who used art, writing and ideas to navigate a world on the verge of upheaval.

ONE OF KIRKUS’S 20 BEST BOOKS OF JANUARY ONE OF BOOK PAGE’S TOP 10 BOOKS OF THE MONTH The “endlessly compelling” (NYT Book Review) untold story of a trailblazing Paris correspondent for The New Yorker, who sounded the alarm about the rise of fascism in Europe while becoming enmeshed in the sensational case of a German serial killer stalking the streets of the French capital on the eve of WWII. In 1925, the Indianapolis-born Janet Flanner took an assignment to write a regular ‘Letter from Paris’ for a lighthearted humor magazine called The New Yorker.

Published by Hachette Book Group

SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2026 WOMEN’S PRIZE FOR NON-FICTION • A Foyles Top Ten Read for February • A 2026 Highlight in The Financial Times • Evening Standard • The Bookseller "This is a scintillatingly good book. . . . Thrillingly immersive. . . .

Published by Penguin Random House Canada

Mark Braude is the author of three books of nonfiction, most recently Kiki Man Ray: Art, Love, and Rivalry in 1920s Paris, a New York Times Notable Book of 2022 and a New Yorker Best Book of the Year. He has been a Postdoctoral Fellow at Stanford University, a Visiting Fellow at the American Library in Paris, and an NEH Public Scholar.

Jane Rogoyska is the author of Surviving Katyń, about the 1940 massacre of 22,000 Polish prisoners of war by the Soviet secret police which was the winner of the Mark Lynton History Prize and was longlisted for the Ondaatje Prize in 2022. Her first book, Gerda Taro: Inventing Robert Capa, charts the life of the first female photojournalist to be killed on the front line of battle during the Spanish Civil War. Hotel Exile was a finalist for the Women’s Prize for Non-fiction.

Dates & Times

Wed, Oct 28
4:30pm
5:30pm
A book signing will follow this event

Tickets

Full Festival Pass
SOLD OUT
Regular $159
Under 30 $79
5-Day Festival Pass
Includes 5-day festival events. Excludes Masterclasses.
Regular $159
Under 30 $79
1-Day Wednesday
Includes all Wednesday events.
Excludes Masterclasses.
Regular $29
Under 30 $15
Pass Information
5-Day Festival Pass includes Barbara Kingsolver and East West Street: A Song of Good & Evil .
2-Day Weekend and 1-Day Passes do not include Winter Garden Theatre events.

Venue

Alumni Hall, Victoria College
91 Charles St W, Toronto, ON

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