The Vanished Collection Pauline Baer de Perignon

Today's nonfiction post is on The Vanished Collection by Pauline Baer de Perignon and Natasha Lehrer  (Translator). The audiobook is 5 hours and 41 minutes long and it is published by Dreamscape Media. The cover is an illustration of a Paris apartment with an empty picture frame. The intended reader is someone who is interested in looted art, World War 2 history, and family memoirs.  There is no foul language, no sex, and no violence in this book. There Be Spoilers Ahead.

From the back- It all started with a list of paintings. There, scribbled by a cousin she hadn't seen for years, were the names of the masters whose works once belonged to her great-grandfather, Jules Strauss: Renoir, Monet, Degas, Tiepolo and more. Pauline Baer de Perignon knew little to nothing about Strauss, or about his vanished, precious art collection. But the list drove her on a frenzied trail of research in the archives of the Louvre and the Dresden museums, through Gestapo records, and to consult with Nobel laureate Patrick Modiano. What happened in 1942? And what became of the collection after Nazis seized her great-grandparents’ elegant Parisian apartment? The quest takes Pauline Baer de Perignon from the Occupation of France to the present day as she breaks the silence around the wrenching experiences her family never fully transmitted, and asks what art itself is capable of conveying over time.

Review- An interesting memoir about family and discovering history. De Perignon learned that before the second world war, her family owned some very precious art and after the war, everything was gone. Then she starts to research what her family had owed and where it could have gone. This became more than just an interest in family history but a search for justice. De Perignon takes the reader from the beginning of her search all the way to a happy ending but this story is more than just about stolen art. It is about De Perignon learning about her family and herself. She had never thought about many things around her family or herself, like did she identify as Jewish or not. The translation is good, the narrator is good, and this is a very nice book to listen to. I would recommend this book both in audiobook and print version. 

I give this book a Four out of Five stars. I get nothing for my review and I borrowed this audiobook from my local library.