Army of Shadows

Army of Shadows really takes you to the heart of what it is to be in the Resistance and I think one of the book’s greatest characteristics is that it celebrates the anonymous heroes, the ordinary man or woman who acts as a messenger, carries a suitcase from one town to another… It’s absolutely gripping too. About halfway through the book it stops being a story about the different characters and becomes almost like jottings by the main character, the Resistance leader Philippe Gerbier and you see everything through his eyes. You see the Germans and the Vichy police squeezing the Resistance more and more. You see his world gradually disintegrating; all the people he works with are being arrested, tortured and killed, and he tells it all.