Lucien Bernard is the central character in The Paris Architect and, as Lucien’s wife Celeste leaves, she calls him an “architectural Mephistopheles”.

It’s not until much later in this intriguing novel that he acknowledges she was right.

Set in Occupied France during World War II, The Paris Architect opens with Lucien Bernard heading to a meeting with an industrialist called Manet, who asks him to devise a hiding place for some Jews.

Punishments under Nazism for being caught helping Jews are severe. So, at first, Lucien’s fear and anti-Semitism lead him to decline.

Vanity, the thrill of a challenge and the prospect of advancing his architectural career through designing factories for the Germans do, however, result in him working regularly for Manet, devising ingenious hiding spots under stairs, in columns, behind mirrors and in drains.

Lucien is puffed up with pride each time he learns he has “outwitted the Gestapo with his architectural ingenuity”.

These commissions and his factory-design collaborations with the Nazis mean he has access to food and other goods that most normal French citizens must queue for or do not have enough ration coupons to buy.

Twists in the plot help the novel to stay lively.

• Lucien’s mistress, Adele, becomes a collaborator and lives high on the hog by sleeping with a Nazi officer.
• Lucien’s brave and sexy new girlfriend Bette keeps her cool brilliantly when German soldiers search her apartment.
• Builders and priests are tortured by the Gestapo to give up their secrets about Jews smuggled into hiding and across borders.
• Lucien is captured by the Resistance and brought face-to-face with the human cost of his actions.

Lucien’s wife’s words echo as he realises that he has sold his soul to the Germans in order to design things — things that have killed his own countrymen.

“Celeste was right; he had crossed the line over to collaboration for the sake of his art.”

Halting metamorphosis

English-Canadian journalist and author Malcolm Gladwell told The Guardian that The Paris Architect was his favourite novel of 2013. “It is a beautiful and elegant account of an ordinary man’s unexpected and reluctant descent into heroism during the second world war,” he said.

Similarly, what I liked most about The Paris Architect was Lucien’s halting metamorphosis from ambitious egotist and collaborator to warm-hearted human hero.

Lucien’s development is given context through a cast of characters that some reviewers have called caricatures. My sense was that, while a few characters verged on being clichés, most were more like deft brushstrokes highlighting aspects of, and a variety of perspectives on, the conflict.

The Paris Architect portrays the violence in Occupied France with chilling directness.

It also deals successfully with familiar themes, like how easy it is to look away when people are persecuted; how blinkered people can be regarding their own moral failings; and how war breeds duplicity (with people pretending to be part of the resistance but actually colluding with the enemy).

There’s an author Q & A at the end of the book, where readers discover that Charles Belfoure is an architect whose aim is to write fiction based on architecture.

We also learn that the novel’s inspiration came in part from his mother’s own wartime experience. She had been working in a factory that made chewing tobacco for German soldiers when a supervisor singled her out to work as a housekeeper and translator for the contractor who constructed tunnels inside the Hartz Mountains, where rockets were assembled.

“The German supervisor’s one act of kindness saved her,” Belfoure said. “People can’t survive terrible times without help from others.”

The Paris Architect asks us to ponder the fickleness of human nature and the ugliness of war. It asks us to think about how far we would go to help others in terrible times; how much courage we could marshal to resist coercion and to act for the greater good.

The Paris Architect
Charles Belfoure
Pan Macmillan Australia, $29.99