Alice Austen’s staggering debut novel 33 Place Brugmann, set during the Nazi invasion of Belgium, alternates narrators between residents of the titular Brussels apartment as each one; Jewish and gentile, European and American, children and adults; reckon with what their future under occupation may look like and what they must do to survive it. Austen, whose background includes international law (she lived in the real 33 Place Brugmann while representing Vaclav Havel in the European courts,) filmmaking (her film Give Me Liberty premiered at Sundance in 2019), and playwriting, writes her characters with such immense care and intimacy that each change in perspective feels like wandering the apartment’s hallways and being allowed a peek into someone’s home and way of life. 33 Brugmann Place is an honest, bold look at the realities of wartime and how truths can morph in front of our eyes. It is also a love letter to art, to community, and, ultimately, to humanity, and one that could not come soon enough as we watch our own country change.

Austen spoke with Zelda Zerkel-Morris for the National.

Alice Austen’s staggering debut novel 33 Place Brugmann, set during the Nazi invasion of Belgium, alternates narrators between residents of the titular Brussels apartment as each one; Jewish and gentile, European and American, children and adults; reckon with what their future under occupation may look like and what they must do to survive it. Austen, whose background includes international law (she lived in the real 33 Place Brugmann while representing Vaclav Havel in the European courts,) filmmaking (her film Give Me Liberty premiered at Sundance in 2019), and playwriting, writes her characters with such immense care and intimacy that each change in perspective feels like wandering the apartment’s hallways and being allowed a peak into someone’s home and way of life. 33 Brugmann Place is an honest, bold look at the realities of wartime and how truths can morph in front of our eyes. It is also a love letter to art, to community, and, ultimately, to humanity, and one that could not come soon enough as we watch our own country change.

Something that I really loved about the book is the debates and conversations that emerge from having so many different characters’ perspectives. Abstract ideas like time and truth are constantly in flux depending on who you’re hearing from. What was it like writing each of these perspectives. Did one come easier to you than another?

When I decided upon the narrative structure—told from the first-person perspectives of the building residents—I knew I would have to inhabit each of the characters, which was a challenge as they are diverse in their outlooks and backgrounds. I had to truly put myself in their shoes. I walked with them, heard and saw and smelled and felt what they did. This way, I was able to understand each of their points of view—why they behaved the way they did. I related more closely to some of the characters at the outset, but sometimes a character’s behavior surprised me, and I found myself moving closer to them as I wrote the book.

At the outset of the novel each character also has a different perspective on morality and each is confronted with difficult choices in the course of the narrative This inevitably results in nuance. And sometimes a rigid understanding of moral behavior stops making sense. There are lines—murderous, traitorous, evil. But take truth-telling and obeying the law as an example. What if you must lie and break the law to save yourself or your family, or your friend or neighbor? What if moral action within a community becomes illegal in the context of the state? These are situations my characters must grapple with in the novel.

The question of time has always been fascinating to me. I think our sense of time changes during extreme events—war and occupation and as we recently learned, lockdowns. It moves faster and more slowly. We often have the keen sense of having lost time. The characters experience this as well.

Your film, Give Me Liberty, is set over the course of one day, and 33 Place Brugmann takes place mostly inside the building itself. As a writer, what is it like working with these constraints of space and time?

Time and place are central to my writing, and I often consider the Aristotelian unities (time, place, action) when I’m structuring a story. Not because I adhere to them but for the simple reason that constraint can liberate and propel art. A more complex narrative can emerge powerfully amid a grounded sense of time and place. And I almost always see place as a character. Number 33, the building in the novel, is no exception. I lived in the building for some years and came to know the place and the people, including two elderly residents who had lived there since before the war. Their stories and my experiences living and working in Brussels, and the building itself were the original inspirations for the book.

I also believe structure should be organic to the story you’re telling. Sometimes a writer must re-think the structure. Give Me Liberty is a great example of this. We had a wild script that took place over a period of days. People responded to the world, but something held it back. We came up with a 24-hour structure, a ticking clock for the central character, that pulled all the disparate communities and stories together into one linear narrative. Movie-goers related to the story of a crazy day and in that structure, all the unexpected things that happened somehow made sense.

The narrative of the novel opens at Number 33. We get to know the building residents in that community and then we follow them beyond it, telling the story of a community, a country, and a continent during one of the most difficult times in modern history.

There’s an especially memorable scene in the novel where Charlotte, one of the protagonists, is shown an act of kindness by a Nazi officer and is extremely conflicted over how to receive it. There are a few moments in the book where characters are forced to reckon with the humanity of people they have been positioned opposite from in the war. Can you talk a little about why it felt important to highlight these moments of nuance?

In the past few years, I’ve been struck by how often people find themselves living in a country they’re from while not believing in or agreeing with its regime. Most don’t have the option of going somewhere else. In Europe during World War II, many people were in this situation—soldiers (often teenagers) were conscripted, whole nations were occupied. It was a terrible time and yet I heard stories of how people, despite those circumstances, fought to retain their fundamental humanity, and in some instances risked their lives to do so. While far too rare, it’s hopeful to hear these stories. As the characters in 33 Place Brugmann show us, there are many ways to resist a regime, both big and small. The music of Django Reinhardt, the Belgian-born father of European Jazz, figures in the book as well. Django was of Roma descent. The Roma were forced to wear brown triangles, and many were killed the Nazis. Moreover, the Nazi regime didn’t approve of jazz. Yet Django kept playing and his music became a symbol of resistance.

I would be remiss if I didn’t point out the chilling similarities between the times that the novel is set and what is currently going on in America. What was it like researching and writing about a place on the brink of authoritarianism? I knew I would tell this story because it stayed with me in the way stories I write do. Witnessing our increasingly polarized world, it felt urgent. People have such strong views, and they don’t listen to those who hold opposing views, yet we often live in communities with neighbors who hold those opposing views. What if we depend on those neighbors for security – food even? This was the case at 33 Place Brugmann during the war.

The mathematician and philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein’s book Tractatus is foundational to the novel. In it, Wittgenstein tries through deduction to find facts that can be agreed upon as a basis for truth and also communication. The question of how we can ever understand one another and the idea of communication to do so are also central to the novel. When people in a society stop talking and arguing and agreeing to sometimes disagree but talking nonetheless, that is the most dangerous time of all. It’s when the possibility of understanding, of empathizing, is abandoned for ideology. And that in turn paves the way for an authoritarian regime to take hold. This was one of the essential takeaways from my research. And also that denial and incrementalism often go hand in hand. As an authoritarian regime begins to erode personal liberties and autonomy, people rationalize the regime’s behavior. They excuse it, usually because they are not yet personally affected.

I know you also have a background in international law that brought you to Brussels for several years, I would love to know that influenced your creative process.

When I moved into Number 33, I was commuting to Prague and working on behalf of Vaclav Havel’s nascent Czech Republic. As you doubtless know, Havel was a playwright and philosopher who inspired the Velvet Revolution and went on to lead his country. He was of the view that a person who does nothing in the face of an immoral system is as culpable as those participating in it. That society will only hold if we each take full responsibility for what happens to everyone. We can’t be bystanders, head turned away, hoping for the best. I ask myself if I can possibly measure up to Havel’s standard. And it is certainly a question I had in mind as I wrote the novel and followed my characters on their respective paths, each making choices, deciding who and what mattered to them most.

Many of the characters in the novel are artists: architects, painters, seamstresses. Their crafts also impact how they view the world and the changes in their country. Is that something you notice in yourself as a playwright and author?

Art is central to the book precisely because there are characters who are painters and designers and architects and art dealers. One of the questions they grapple with is why art matters. What does it tell us about who we are? How does it make us better, more human? Wittgenstein was of the view that ethics and aesthetics are one, a view shared by Havel.

My world view, like those of my characters, has undoubtedly been shaped by what I do—being a writer. For one thing, I’m more inclined to look at people as characters and to empathize rather than judge, to try and understand how we each struggle. But not always and sometimes it’s a lot harder than others, impossible even, and I must remind myself that just like with my characters in Number 33, keeping the conversation going is the essential thing.

Is there anything else you want to add?

The characters in 33 Place Brugmann find themselves in circumstances they never would have imagined. But the book is about life; it tells the story of a group of people living through a dark time. It is not about the darkness itself. Some of the characters are joyful, some despondent, others find new purpose. They struggle to hold fast to some notion of community and family. Many of them are trying to live as well and fully and as long as they can, in a powerful refutation to the regime that seeks to control and destroy their lives.

When someone tells me they loved reading the book and spending time with these characters, and that they the world to be filled with beauty and hope against that darkness—to me that’s everything.