An Uplifting Story Beautifully Told.”
The Irish Examiner
*****
“A Charming Story.”
Sinead Moriarty
*****
“Stunning. Mindblowing.”
Victoria Mary Clarke
*****
“Delivered in Exceptional Prose.”
Joanne Harris
*****
If you love magical, heartfelt fantasy bestsellers like The Polish Nurse by Leah Moyes, The Tattooist of Auschwitz by Heather Morris, Perfume by Patrick Suskind, Chocolat by Joanne Harris, The Alice Network by Kate Quinn, combined with the rich literary style of writers like Gabriel Garcia Marquez, you will love Writing Man by Frances Flannery.
Writing Man by Frances Flannery centres around an enchanted manuscript, The Scent of Heaven, penned by a young woman, a brave Jewish prisoner in a WW2 concentration camp in Germany during the Holocaust. For years, her beautiful story lay undiscovered in the writing desk of Claude Pilzerhoff, a famous German writer who achieved international acclaim after the war. Claude remained in Frankfurt to write a great humanitarian book about the city, detailing the trains that rattled in and out, the destruction of Germany’s oldest medieval city, the weather, and even the shoes people chose to wear as their lives and city crumbled around them.
Whats it about?
Tobias Pilzerhoff and Loulita Hirsh first meet in a writing class in Frankfurt one cold September evening in 1986. Tobias, snobbish and arrogant, lacks creativity, while Loulita, timid and frail, has untapped writing talent. They part ways unaware their lives will be dramatically connected through a beautiful story written by an unknown Jewish death camp prisoner.
Tobias, desperate to become a famous writer like his father Claude, discovers the mysterious Hebrew manuscript in his deceased father’s desk, and publishes The Scent of Heaven as his own, only to gain global success when the The Scent of Heaven becomes worldwide bestseller, achieving significant critical acclaim, and widespread global commercial success, from a book he never wrote. Enter Helmut Englehart, a former Nazi soldier who worked in the same concentration camp where a young Jewish writer penned the book. After WW2, Helmut sets up a chocolaterie in Brussels, haunted by the memory of the starving young Jewish girl who wrote to escape, producing in the darkest of places beautiful, magical fantasies; stories designed to uplift and offer hope to herself and others. Instead of focusing on the atrocities around her, she poured her joyful soul into that manuscript infusing it with all the good things of life - love, beauty, joy.
Loulita Hirsch, an anorexic young woman damaged by personal tragedy and the loss of her parents, comes to work at Mullers Palais de Praline. Helmut sees saving her as a chance to exorcise his past ghosts about that young Jewish author. One day, after she begins reading The Scent of Heaven Loulita recalls meeting him in a writing class, and recognizes Tobias’s bestselling novel as unlike his past work. She begins to suspects he didn’t write the book at all. Her suspicions are confirmed when Helmut remembers giving the manuscript to Claude Pilzerhoff, the one he saved from a young Jewish prisoner who died before telling her story.
Determined to unravel the mystery of The Scent of Heaven, Loulita embarks on a journey to uncover the truth. Will Loulita find her voice? Will Helmut exorcise the ghosts of the war? Will the world ever know the real story behind the book that has captivated the world.
Be the first to read this thrilling novel by acclaimed Irish author Frances Flannery. With rave reviews from The Irish Examiner, Joanne Harris author of Chocolat, award-winning writer Sinead Moriarty, and internationally acclaimed writer Victoria Mary Clarke, this is a page-turner not to be missed.
