num_pages: 544
description: [A] remarkable saga.... Engrossing.  Booklist starred reviewIn this triumphant debut inspired by true events a ragtag gang of journalists and resistance fighters risk everything for an elaborate scheme to undermine the Reich.The Nazis stole their voices. But they would not be silenced.Brussels 1943. Twelve-year-old street orphan Helene survives by living as a boy and selling copies of the countrys most popular newspaper Le Soir now turned into Nazi propaganda. Helenes world changes when she befriends a rogue journalist Marc Aubrion who draws her into a secret network that publishes dissident underground newspapers.The Nazis track down Aubrions team and give them an impossible choice: turn the resistance newspapers into a Nazi propaganda bomb that will sway public opinion against the Allies or be killed. Faced with no decision at all Aubrion has a brilliant idea. While pretending to do the Nazis bidding they will instead publish a fake edition of Le Soir that pokes fun at Hitler and Stalindaring to laugh in the face of their oppressors.The ventriloquists have agreed to die for a joke and they have only eighteen days to tell it.Featuring an unforgettable cast of characters and stunning historical detail E.R. Ramzipoors dazzling debut novel illuminates the extraordinary acts of courage by ordinary people forgotten by time. It is a moving and powerful ode to the importance of the written word and to the unlikely heroes who went to extreme lengths to orchestrate the most stunning feat of journalism in modern history.
language: English
title: The Ventriloquists
publisher: Park Row