Excerpt from A BOOKSELLER IN MADRID by Mario Escobar:
My father was a writer. We had loads of books at home, our huge library bigger than anyone else’s I knew except my grandfather Gábor’s. He was a well-known playwright who passed away when I was young. I inherited another passion from my father: his love for the French language. We Germans have always had a somewhat ambivalent relationship with the French, swinging between deep admiration for their culture and literature and complete disdain for so many other things. Yet since Adolf Hitler’s rise to power and relentless attempt to take over every aspect of German society, France had become just one more enemy to take down.
My other grandfather, Klaus, came from a much humbler background, and his family trade was woodworking, though he became a pastor. I was just a child when he built me a lovely little bookshelf for my room in our house on the outskirts of Berlin. From then on, I played at being a bookseller. I practiced all the time with my two sisters and my friends. When I finished my degree in French philology, it was the most natural thing in the world for me to start working at a highly acclaimed bookstore in downtown Berlin.
The store belonged to a well-known Jewish family. The owner was one of the women I admired most in the world. Ruth Friedman inherited the business from her father, who had inherited it in turn from his. Initially selling only books in Yiddish, the store evolved into a niche for foreign-language literature, especially French.
“That girl’s a tough cookie,” Mrs. Friedman said, flipping through the magazine for German booksellers. Hitler had threatened to do away with all non-Aryan cultures, but so far nothing had come of it. Mrs. Friedman believed his words were just a political maneuver to secure the support of all the racist Nationalist citizens.
“What girl?” I asked.
“Françoise Frenkel, the Polish woman who runs La Maison du Livre, the French bookshop. The Nazis have been giving her grief for a decade now, though I don’t know if it’s because she’s a Jew or because she sells French books.”
I had heard glowing reports about that meeting place for booklovers but had never been able to visit. As soon as my workday ended, I would head straight there to continue my research. My goal was to finish my doctorate in French philology and then to open my own store. On top of all that, I was an editor for a few small publishing houses that translated books from French.
“Why don’t the police do something to stop them?” I asked.
Ruth burst out laughing at my naivete. “The police? Hermann Göring is their boss! You think he’ll lift a finger to protect the Jews or the Polish immigrants?”
My father, a Social Democrat, had a seat in parliament and had already experienced the wrath of Adolf Hitler and his henchmen. After the burning of the Reichstag a month prior, the Enabling Act passed in March granted dictatorial powers to Hitler. Communist and Socialist representatives were denied access to their seats in parliament, and many of them were locked up in jails or in Dachau, the fearful concentration camp outside of Munich. My father had friends in the Centre Party and among the non-Nazi ministers. For the moment, that had kept him out of jail. Everyone advised him to get out of the country, but he was not yet willing to leave our family home and all the memories, especially everything he had shared with my mother, Magda.
That day, when my shift was over, I removed the pink apron all the female employees wore to reveal a floral dress, which was a celebration of the long 1933 summer, and went to pay my first visit to the bookstore of Mrs. Frenkel. From the outside it looked like a little French hole-in-the-wall, but inside it was open and welcoming, the kind of place you never wanted to leave. There was a poster on the door about an upcoming lecture by a famous French author. Several French newspapers lined a front table. Many Berliners bought French papers because censorship had already stifled most of the German periodicals.
A man with round glasses looked up as I entered. Besides us, the place was oddly empty for that time of day, when people were generally out and about doing their shopping. My presence clearly surprised the man.
“May I help you with anything, young lady?” he asked.
“Oh, I’m just having a look.”
The man nodded and went back to his book. I wandered between tables and mahogany bookshelves, carefully opening the cover or running my fingers down the spine of one volume after another. I loved the smell of books and wood, of ink and paper—the aroma of libraries and bookstores. For me that smell was the gateway to paradise lost, where nothing bad could happen to me.
Copyright © 2025 by Harper Focus
How can the words of the past help heal the horror of the present?
For as long as she can remember, Barbara Spiel has always found solace in books. Born in Germany and having come of age in a tumultuous era, she flees her home country as the Nazis rise to power in the early 1930s. Her destination? Madrid. There she's determined to realize her long-held dream of opening a bookshop and creating a safe haven for young idealists and independent thinkers to come together to transform the world.
Yet Spain isn't immune from its own troubles. The winds of change are blowing through both city and countryside, and it's impossible to predict what will happen. When the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War puts Barbara and everyone around her in peril—including the Spanish Socialist parliamentarian she's fallen deeply in love with—the terror and hatred seem all too familiar. It's like Germany all over again, only with its own cast of extremist characters.
Hounded simultaneously by Stalinist checas, Francoist Facists, and the German Gestapo, Barbara fights to keep her bookstore the safe haven that she's always imagined it would be. But with war brewing both inside Spain and outside its borders throughout the entirety of Europe—and beyond—Barbara isn't sure who exactly she can trust, or if people really are who they claim to be.
A story told with tremendous heart and astonishing historical accuracy, A Bookseller in Madrid is ultimately a story about dreams—dreaming with courage when nothing seems to make sense, and dreaming with hope when words printed on a page are all you can hold on to.
Historical [Harper Muse, On Sale: July 1, 2025, Paperback / e-Book , ISBN: 9781400347445 / eISBN: 9781400347452]
Mario Escobar has a master’s degree in modern history and has written numerous books and articles that delve into the depths of church history, the struggle of sectarian groups, and the discovery and colonization of the Americas. Escobar, who makes his home in Madrid, Spain, is passionate about history and its mysteries.
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