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A Taxi to Biarritz: A Pianist’s Journey of a Lifetime by Mathieu Ortlieb is a haunting and heartfelt novel that intertwines music, memory, and redemption against the backdrop of World War II. At 83, Yvonne, a reclusive former pianist, embarks on an unexpected road trip from Paris to Biarritz with Jean-Pierre, her disillusioned taxi driver. Haunted by her past, Yvonne confronts the guilt of her unwitting complicity in her father’s Nazi collaboration, whose Biarritz home became a site of torture during the occupation. As they travel, old photographs and vivid flashbacks unravel her story—her forced role masking prisoners’ cries with piano scales, the loss of her Jewish friends Myriam and Isi, and her coerced time as a guard at Ravensbrück.

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