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Jewish Book Week Online Events - Thursday

Jewish Book Week 2025

Thu 6 Mar
Words

Jewish Book Week Online Events - Thursday

Jewish Book Week 2025

33 Place Brugmann - 12:30pm

Speaker Alice Austen

John Singer Sargent & the Wertheimers - 2:00pm

Speaker Jean Strouse

On the fourth and final day of online events for Jewish Book Week 2025, join us as Alice Austen presents her debut novel, the gripping story of a family’s disappearance in wartime Brussels, and Jean Strouse discusses the mysteries and tragedies surrounding 12 particular portraits of an Edwardian family by John Singer Sargent.


33 Place Brugmann – 12:30pm

Acclaimed American playwright and filmmaker Alice Austen joins us online to discuss her debut novel, the gripping story of a family’s disappearance in wartime Brussels, and an extensive art collection left behind.

On the eve of the occupation of Brussels in 1940, life for those living in the apartments at 33 Place Brugmann is about to change forever. An art dealer’s family disappears, leaving behind only their priceless collection. A Nazi functionary moves into the building and the residents’ lives become increasingly entwined. Internationally acclaimed playwright and filmmaker Alice Austen joins us online from the US to discuss her debut novel 33 Place Brugmann, a propulsive and hopeful tour de force championing the restorative power of love, courage and art in times of great threat.

This event will last approximately 1 hour.

Register here to attend this online event.

About the speaker:

Alice Austen is an award-winning screenwriter, producer, and playwright. A graduate of Harvard Law School, she co-founded the Harvard Human Rights Journal, and she was the first American to receive a fellowship to the European Court of Human Rights. She studied creative writing under Seamus Heaney and has been awarded a Royal Court Residency; and her work has been honoured with an Independent Spirit Award, a Joseph Jefferson Award Nomination and a Terrence McNally Award Premiere Five. Austen has two films going into production, one with Alfonso Cuarón, and the other with Steven Soderbergh. Austen lived for a period in Brussels, in a Beaux Arts building called 33 Place Brugmann. In her time living in the building, she forged friendships with the building’s older residents, including an intrepid former Belgian Resistance fighter. It was here that the seed for her debut first took root.


John Singer Sargent & the Wertheimers – 2:00pm

Bancroft Prize winner Jean Strouse joins us to discuss the mysteries and tragedies surrounding 12 portraits of an Edwardian family by an American artist at the height of his powers.

By commissioning John Singer Sargent, London art dealer Asher Wertheimer became his greatest private patron. When he left most of the series to London’s National Gallery, the Wertheimers were the first Jews to appear alongside the Anglo-Saxon dignitaries painted by earlier masters. Family Romance travels from the Habsburg court to fascist Italy, charting the decline of the British aristocracy and the rise of new wealth on both sides of the Atlantic.

This event will last approximately 1 hour.

Register here to attend this online event.

About the speaker:

Jean Strouse is the author of Morgan: American Financier and Alice James: A Biography, which won the Bancroft Prize in American History and Diplomacy. Her essays and reviews have appeared in the New Yorker, the New York Review of Books, the New York Times, Architectural Digest and Newsweek. Strouse has been a Fellow of the MacArthur Foundation and served as the Sue Ann and John Weinberg Director of the Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library from 2003 to 2017. She lives in New York City.

Date:Thu 6 Mar
Start time:12.30pm (Doors: 12pm)
Venue:Kings Place
Price:Free tickets for all Jewish Book Week online events can be booked via the link below.
Register here