FEAST OR FAMINE

The Art of Resistance: My Four Years in the French Underground (2019) is the memoir of Justus Rosenberg from 1921, his birth, to 1946 his arrival in America. He focuses on his time in Europe.   Rosenberg is writing his memoirs at the age of 98, after teaching literature at an American university for fifty years. He begins briefly with his early years, born in Danzig on the Baltic Sea, before leaving home to study in Paris in 1937 at the age of sixteen.    Part II is the Paris years, the impending Second World War, and his evacuation to Marseilles, where he joins the American Emergency Rescue Committee as a courier in 1940. By the beginning of 1942, he is in Grenoble participating in the Resistance, where he assisted intellectuals escape – such as Marc Chagall and Andre Breton.    Part III is his internment in a detention camp near Lyon, the centre of the French Underground. He goes to great extremes to escape.    He was waiting for the Allied troops at...

  MARTINA NICOLLS Website Martinasblogs Publications Facebook Paris Website Animal Website Flower Website SUBSCRIBE TO MARTINA NICOLLS FOR NEWS AND UPDATES    MARTINA NICOLLS  is an international aid and development consultant, and the  author   of:  The Paris Residences of James Joyce   (2020), Similar But Different in the Animal Kingdom (2017), The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).

  In April 2021, the Luxembourg Garden in Paris added new features in the large grounds – wooden installations. One installation was a family of deer, and another installation was a group of foxes and rabbits, and another was wild boar.    Now there is another new wooden installation – two cranes.   The sign says, “through a playful and poetic journey, [Luxembourg Garden] will invite you to stroll away from the city, in an idealized countryside. From June, you will be able to discover the first blooms of these richly planted vegetations scenes or hidden unusual residents.”   MARTINA NICOLLS Website Martinasblogs Publications Facebook Paris Website Animal Website Flower Website SUBSCRIBE TO MARTINA NICOLLS FOR NEWS AND UPDATES    MARTINA NICOLLS  is an international aid and development consultant, and the  author   of:  The Paris Residences of James Joyce   (2020), Similar But Different in the Animal Kingdom (2017), Th...

Walking on the Ceiling (2019) is set in set in Paris in France, and Istanbul in Turkey.   After her mother’s death, Nunu moves from Istanbul to Paris to study literature. She meets an older British writer, M, outside a bookstore. He had written about Istanbul.    They form a friendship and walk the Parisian streets regularly, talking about his novels. They talk about the rapidly changing city of Istanbul. She opens up about her mother’s and father’s death. M seeks more and more of her memories, as if he is a collector of other people’s past lives. Does she talk too much about herself, her past, her home city?   Then M announces that he has started a new novel – another tale about Turkey.   The author is recalling M after a few years. She has one photograph of him. She feels the need to write about the friendship ‘to keep something of this time intact.’   This a gentle time in Nunu’s brief life in Paris as the gains comfort in other people’s words and then c...

    MARTINA NICOLLS Website Martinasblogs Publications Facebook Paris Website Animal Website Flower Website SUBSCRIBE TO MARTINA NICOLLS FOR NEWS AND UPDATES    MARTINA NICOLLS  is an international aid and development consultant, and the  author   of:  The Paris Residences of James Joyce   (2020), Similar But Different in the Animal Kingdom (2017), The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).    

  MARTINA NICOLLS Website Martinasblogs Publications Facebook Paris Website Animal Website Flower Website SUBSCRIBE TO MARTINA NICOLLS FOR NEWS AND UPDATES    MARTINA NICOLLS  is an international aid and development consultant, and the  author   of:  The Paris Residences of James Joyce   (2020), Similar But Different in the Animal Kingdom (2017), The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).