Outside the Gates

The gates of Drancy Internment Camp in the northeast suburbs of Paris served as a holding pen for thousands of Jews during the German occupation of France in World War II. Jean Wahl, philosophy professor, poet, bachelor at the top of Parisian society before his arrest, was among those very few who escaped.

In this searing historical novel by W. C. Hackett, the story is told in Wahl's own voice, from the moment he passed beyond the gates of the camp to his harrowing flight for the Free Zone in the south. Based on extensive archival research, Outside the Gates binds by spell in a work of vast interior proportions, bringing the reader face to face with the defining mortal questions Jean Wahl himself faces recollecting his year of trial.