Title: The Ventriloquists           

Author: E.R. Ramzipoor          

Genre: Historical Fiction        

Publisher: Park Row Publishing         

Format: Paperback 

Pages: 527

Rating: 4/5 stars 

Synopsis (Goodreads):

In 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.

Brussels, 1943. Twelve-year-old street orphan Helene survives by living as a boy and selling copies of the country’s most popular newspaper, Le Soir, now turned into Nazi propaganda. Helene’s entire world changes when she befriends a rogue journalist, Marc Aubrion, who draws her into a secret network publishing dissident underground newspapers.

Aubrion’s unbridled creativity and linguistic genius attract the attention of August Wolff, a high-ranking Nazi official tasked with swaying public opinion against the Allies. Wolff captures Aubrion and his comrades and gives them an impossible choice: use the newspaper to paint the Allies as monsters, or be killed. Faced with no decision at all, Aubrion has a brilliant idea: they will pretend to do the Nazis’ bidding, but instead they will publish a fake edition of Le Soir that pokes fun at Hitler and Stalin—giving power back to the Belgians by daring 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.

Told with dazzling scope, taut prose and devastating emotion, The Ventriloquists illuminates the extraordinary acts of courage by ordinary people forgotten by history—unlikely heroes who went to extreme lengths to orchestrate the most stunning feat of journalism in modern history.

Review:

Thank you to @parkrowbooks for sending me a copy of this book!

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This book was a lot more complicated than I expected! The focus of this book is on a group of people in Belgium during the Second World War who are hoping to use a newspaper to disrupt the Nazi propaganda system, and boost morale for the Belgians! There were complicated characters, with different motivations for doing what they were doing, and how they got involved in these schemes was very interesting!

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The book is told from the perspective of an old woman, who happened to be a child at the time of the events during the Second World War, and was working for one of the leaders of this group, and gets wrapped up in the scheme. I thought this was an interesting way to tell the story, but I kinda thought it weird how this child would know all the intricate details that were divulged in the book, but if you ignore that aspect, the book flowed quite well! The group had a diverse set of characters, including a member of the theatre and playwright, a sex worker, a professor, and a factory worker! The novel also included a Jewish man who is able to replicate the writing of any person, which I thought was an interesting detail. Overall, if you love World War Two stories, then definitely check this one out! 

Happy reading!