Hotel Exile

Paris in the Face of Fascism and the Shadow of War, 1933-1945

By: Jane Rogoyska

SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2026 WOMEN’S PRIZE FOR NON-FICTION • A Foyles Top Ten Read for February • A 2026 Highlight in The Financial Times • Evening Standard • The Bookseller

"This is a scintillatingly good book. . . . Thrillingly immersive. . . . I’ve rarely felt such a sense of the historical moment. Or indeed the present moment. Because if ever a book were about now as well as then, it’s this one." —James McConnachie, The Sunday Times

“A rich collection of personal stories. . . . The result is an almost cinematic account that will, for many readers, connect figures and episodes in a new way.” —Financial Times

This is the story of how one hotel became a place of escape, a place of war, and a place of sanctuary.

A hotel is not an actor in a drama but the stage upon which dramas unfold.

The Hotel Lutetia is a Paris institution—the only grand hotel on the city's bohemian Left Bank. Since its opening in 1905, it has been a meeting place for artists, intellectuals, musicians, and politicians. But in the years before, during, and after the second World War, the hotel had a darker, more tragic history—a place in the shadow of Nazism.

Set in Paris from 1933 to 1945, Hotel Exile recounts the real stories whose lives intersected at the famed Lutetia over the course of 12 transformative years. From artists and intellectuals fleeing Nazi Germany, including Walter Benjamin, James Joyce, and Samuel Beckett; to German counterintelligence officers who commandeered the hotel during the Occupation; and finally, Holocaust survivors and displaced persons who found refuge there after Liberation, Jane Rogoyska brings to life the emotions, dilemmas, and fates of outsiders existing on the edges of war. Rogoyska explores what it meant for three profoundly different groups to live in exile, while passing through the doors of a normally functioning hotel, a site under occupation, and finally, a shelter and place of healing. Vital and tragic, Hotel Exile interweaves portraits of people connected by race, nationality, language, and a legendary Paris establishment, under the dark ideology that dictated the course of lives around the world.

Critic reviews

SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2026 WOMEN’S PRIZE FOR NON-FICTION

[An] exceptional work of non-fiction—you couldn’t just call it a history book, it’s more than that. . . . Rogoyska captures the historical moment with a rare combination of urgency and empathy. . . . [She] has trawled memoirs from hotel staff and ex-officers, unearthing stories that are peculiarly resonant. . . . This is a scintillatingly good book. . . . I’ve rarely felt such a sense of the historical moment. Or indeed the present moment. Because if ever a book were about now as well as then, it’s this one. —James McConnachie, The Sunday Times

“A rich collection of personal stories. . . . The result is an almost cinematic account that will, for many readers, connect figures and episodes in a new way.” —Financial Times

“Hotel Exile is an extraordinary account of a Parisian institution which became a stage set for the terror, tension and triumph of the Second World War. Its staff and guests are thrilling players in an utterly compelling account that sheds important new light on a seemingly familiar episode of modern history.” —Richard Ovenden

“Rogoyska proves such a fresh, astute and unaffected writer that there’s not a dull page, so vividly is the drama of it all communicated.” —Rupert Christiansen, Literary Review

“A devastating and memorable account of lives thrown into upheaval by Nazism.” —Irish Independent

“Impressive and original . . . vivid and thoroughly researched . . . a masterclass.” ―The Spectator

“Beautifully written. . . . This is a compelling book full of lessons we may not wish to hear.” ―Country Life

“Poignant and richly layered.” ―History of War magazine