Lisa Rochon
For readers of The Nightingale, The Paris Library and All the Light We Cannot See, a page-turning story of love, betrayal and sacrifice, and one woman’s complicated connection to the world’s greatest masterpiece, from the bestselling author of Tuscan Daughter.
1910: Eighteen-year-old Mathilde has escaped her lonely provincial childhood to become a painter in Montmartre. Moving in bohemian circles, she models for Picasso and lives hedonistically amongst the artists, writers and intellectuals of Paris, indulging her passions and her ambitions in art and love. But when the Mona Lisa is stolen from the Louvre, and some of Mathilde’s friends and lovers become suspects, life takes a dramatic turn.
1940: As the enemy marches into Paris, Mathilde, now an archivist at the Louvre working quietly under a new identity, is tasked with the evacuation of hundreds of priceless masterpieces to the sprawling Château de Chambord in the Loire Valley. With her she carries a secret—the Mona Lisa is under her sole protection and she vows to hide it from the Nazi occupiers. Nobody must discover its whereabouts. It isn’t until a lover from her past arrives at the château, dressed in a Nazi uniform, that Mathilde finds herself agonizingly torn between her sworn duty to France and a love that still endures.
The Paris Thief brilliantly celebrates the resilience of the human spirit in times of immense upheaval and draws readers into a story of hard-fought love and the reasons why enemy armies are driven to plunder and possess beauty.
