Noah's Child

From one of the world's biggest selling authors comes another million-copy worldwide bestseller: A beautiful and tender fable seen through the eyes of a Jewish child living in Belgium under the Nazi occupation. It is 1942 and the Jews are being deported from Belgium. Separated from his parents, seven-year-old Joseph must go into hiding. He is taken in the dead of night to an orphanage, the Villa Jaune, where the benign and enigmatic Father Pons presides over a motley assortment of children. With the ever-present threat of the Gestapo growing closer, Joseph learns that the secret of survival is to conceal his Jewish heritage. Soon Joseph also discovers that Father Pons has a secret of his own: he is risking his life not only for the boys in his care, but for the Jewish faith itself. Sensitive, funny and deeply humane, Noah's Child is a simple fable that reveals the complexities of faith, bravery and the human condition.

Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt is an internationally bestselling French author and playwright. Noah's Child is the fourth novel in his popular series Cycle de l'Invisible about childhood and religion. He lives in Brussels.