Critics' Opinion:
Readers' rating:
Published May 2015
160 pages
Genre: Literary Fiction
Publication Information
Who is the real author of The Black Insignia? Is it H. R. Sanders, whose name is printed on the cover of every installment of the wildly successful young adult adventure series? Or is it Daniel Roche, the enigmatic world traveler who disappears for months at a time? When Daniel's great-niece, Hélène, moves to Paris to study archeology, she does not expect to be searching for answers to these questions. As rumors circulate, however, that the twenty-fourth volume of The Black Insignia series will be the last, Hélène and her friend Guillaume, a devoted fan of her great-uncle's books, set out to discover more about the man whose life eludes her. In so doing, she uncovers an explosive secret dating back to the darkest days of the Occupation.
In recounting the moment when one history began and another ended, The Travels of Daniel Ascher explores the true nature of fiction: is it a refuge, a lie, or a stand-in for mourning?
"Haunting...the narrative reads like a mash-up of Sarah's Key and The Book Thief, and it adroitly straddles the line between adult and YA literature. A piercing meditation on memory and history." - Publishers Weekly
"Lévy-Bertherat has written an engaging yet ultimately melancholy and moving novel about a search for meaning with its roots buried in WWII France. A slender story but a satisfying one." - Booklist
"Lévy-Bertherat's debut novel is a story about storytelling - both historical and personal...The best moments in Lévy-Bertherat's short novel involve people falling into stories...The writing is lovely." - Kirkus
"Bewitching, charming." - Elle (France)
"Déborah Lévy-Bertherat has a bright literary future." - Lire (France)
"A novel rich in reflections on identity, memory, and the power of fiction." - Le Figaro (France)
"A novel one reads in one sitting that brings us back to the time when traveling meant opening a book." - Le Libraire (Quebec)
"The Travels of Daniel Ascher is about the power of stories, particularly the ones we tell about ourselves. Within its svelte form, the novel packs in a love story (several actually), a family story, a war story, a mystery, a travelogue, and even a convincingly imagined children's adventure series. All these strands weave together beautifully in this deftly plotted and deeply moving novel." - Gabrielle Zevin, author of The Fabled Life of A.J. Fikry
"A startling, beautifully written novel that starts as a stroll in the Luxembourg Gardens and ends in a plunge into the dark, mysterious world of wartime Paris. A real thriller." - Anka Muhlstein, author of Monsieur Proust's Library
This information about The Travels of Daniel Ascher was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Déborah Lévy-Bertherat lives in Paris, where she teaches comparative literature at the École Normale Supérieure. She has translated Lermontov's A Hero of Our Time and Gogol's Petersburg Tales into French. The Travels of Daniel Ascher is her first novel.
Adriana Hunter studied French and Drama at the University of London. She has translated more than fifty books including Eléctrico W by Hervé Le Tellier (winner of the French-American Foundation's 2013 Translation Prize in Fiction). She won the 2011 Scott Moncrieff Prize and has been short-listed twice for the Florence Gould Foundation Translation Prize. She lives in Norfolk, England.
This Strange Eventful History
by Claire Messud
An immersive, masterful story of a family born on the wrong side of history.
The Stolen Child
by Ann Hood
An unlikely duo ventures through France and Italy to solve the mystery of a child’s fate.
Only the Brave by Danielle Steel
A powerful, sweeping historical novel about a courageous woman in World War II Germany.
Your guide toexceptional books
BookBrowse seeks out and recommends the best in contemporary fiction and nonfiction—books that not only engage and entertain but also deepen our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.
