The ventriloquists : a novel
(Book)

Brussels, 1943. Twelve-year-old street orphan Helene survives by living as a boy and selling copies of the country's most popular newspaper, Le Soir, now turned into Nazi propaganda. Helene's world changes when she befriends a rogue journalist, Marc Aubrion, who draws her into a secret network which publishes dissident underground newspapers. The Nazis track down Aubrion's team and give them an impossible choice: use the voice of the resistance to create a Nazi propaganda bomb which will sway public opinion against the Allies, or be killed. Faced with no decision at all, Aubrion has a brilliant idea. While pretending to do the Nazis' bidding, they will publish a fake edition of Le Soir which pokes fun at Hitler and Stalin, daring to laugh in the face of their oppressors. The ventriloquists have agreed to die for a joke, and they have only eighteen days to tell it.