Book Talk: Jonathan Freedland — The Traitors Circle - with Franklin Foer

Watch author Jonathan Freedland's book talk and reading at Politics and Prose bookstore in Washington, D.C.

From the New York Times bestselling author of The Escape Artist, an extraordinary true story of resistance, heroism and betrayal.

When the whole world is lying, someone must tell the truth.

Berlin, 1943: A group of high society anti-Nazi dissenters meet for a tea party one late summer’s afternoon. They do not know that, sitting around the table, is someone poised to betray them all to the Gestapo.

They form a circle of unlikely rebels, drawn from the German elite: two countesses, a diplomat, an intelligence officer, an ambassador’s widow and a pioneering head mistress. What unites every one of them is a shared loathing of the Nazis, a refusal to bow to Hitler and the courage to perform perilous acts of resistance: meeting in the shadows, rescuing Jews or plotting for a future Germany freed from the Führer's rule. Or so they believe.

How did a group of brave, principled rebels, who had successfully defied Adolf Hitler for more than a decade, come to fall into such a lethal trap?

Undone from within and pursued to near-destruction by one of the Reich’s cruelest men, they showed a heroism in the face of the most vengeful regime in history that raises the question: what kind of person does it take to risk everything and stand up to tyranny?

Jonathan Freedland is the author of the New York Times bestseller The Escape Artist: The Man Who Broke Out of Auschwitz to Save the World (National Jewish Book Award winner in both the Biography and Holocaust categories), a weekly columnist for the Guardian and previously the Guardian’s Washington correspondent. Freedland is the host of the Guardian's Politics Weekly America podcast; he presents BBC Radio 4's The Long View and is co-host of the Unholy podcast, alongside the journalist Yonit Levi. He is also the author of several thrillers under the pseudonym Sam Bourne and is a past winner of the George Orwell Prize for Journalism.

Freedland is in conversation with Franklin Foer, a staff writer at the Atlantic. For seven years, he was the editor of the New Republic. He is the author of the New York Times bestseller, The Last Politician: Inside Joe Biden's White House and the Struggle For America's Future. Sports Illustrated named his book How Soccer Explains the World one of the "most influential books of the decade;" it has been translated into 29 languages. He is a native of Washington, D.C.

PURCHASE BOOK HERE

@politicsprose

Visit us online at

Listen on Spotify

Politics and Prose is a beloved and award-winning staple for book lovers around the nation's capital and the world. In addition to our incredible selection of titles, Politics and Prose offers public book talks with today's leading authors and journalists.

Founded by Carla Cohen and Barbara Meade in 1984, Politics and Prose Bookstore is Washington, D.C.'s premier independent bookstore and cultural hub, a gathering place for people interested in reading and discussing books. Politics and Prose offers superior service, unusual book choices, and a haven for book lovers in the store and online.

#books #booktube