The Book of Lost Names

“‘How nice it must be,’ I say softly to Kühn’s picture, ‘to be haunted by questions rather than ghosts.’”

An old woman now, Eva is literally and metaphorically haunted by the past, however far removed it may be. The emergence of a relic from her past splattered on the pages of the modern world takes her back to the memories of all the loved ones she has lost—her mother, father, Remy, and the rest of the resistance fighters who gave their lives for the freedom of France. She and the Book of Lost Names are the only reminders of a world long gone.

“Her father had always called her that, Polish for ‘little sun,’ and she wondered if he saw the bitter irony in it now, as she did. After all, what was the sun but a yellow star?”

The yellow Star of David, once a symbol of the Jewish faith, has been tarnished by the Nazis’ use of it as an identification of Jewish blood. The sun, a literary symbol of hope and newness, is physically just a yellow star, a reminder of Nazi relegation of Jews first to a symbol and then to dust, like stars that burn out in the night sky.

“Colors had leached from the landscape; in many places, the plants and flowers that had once thrived and brought the city to life had wilted and disappeared. But here, window boxes overflowed with peppermint, chervil, and geraniums of pink, lilac, and white, while ivy crept cheerfully up the walls of stone buildings that looked as if they’d been here since long before the French Revolution.”

Paris, as a larger city, has been cloaked in the darkness of Nazi reign, devoid of color and life. However, Aurignon, far enough removed from the center of occupation, is still imbued with the colors of life,