NPR's Book of the Day — Summary

Episode Title: In this novel, the residents of a Brussels apartment building brace for Nazi invasion
Date: December 18, 2025
Host: Scott Simon (NPR)
Guest: Alice Austin (Author of 33 Plas Brugmann)

Overview

This episode explores Alice Austin’s debut novel, 33 Plas Brugmann, which centers on the interconnected lives of residents in a Brussels apartment building on the eve of Nazi invasion in 1939. The conversation delves into themes of community, personal responsibility, cultural identity, and the slow unraveling of society under threat—all through the microcosm of an apartment building. Austin draws on her own experiences living in Brussels and incorporates insights and stories from real-life residents who lived through the occupation.

Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. The Microcosm of an Apartment Building

• Austin reflects on how apartment living encapsulates the complexities of society, both positive and negative.
• Host Andrew Limbong: “It's a microcosm of life, of society.” (00:07)

2. Personal Experience and Inspiration

• Austin lived in the real building and drew on memories and resident stories for the novel’s setting and atmosphere.
  • She commuted to Prague, worked with Vaclav Havel, and encountered elderly residents whose experiences directly inspired characters and plotlines.
• Alice Austin: “Because of that, I got to know residents in the building, including two elderly residents who had lived there before and during the occupation, one of whom had a remarkable private art collection that inspired the art collection in the book.” (02:31)

3. A Fortress and Its Limits

• The building initially feels like a “fortress,” seemingly impervious to outside turmoil, but the illusion does not last.
• Residents’ wartime experiences are both “funny” and “heartbreaking” — underscoring the humanity and suspense as history encroaches.

4. Character Spotlights

• Raphael Family: Jewish art dealers, unassimilated but “comfortably, happily, beautifully Jewish.” Their sudden departure and missing paintings spark speculation and symbolize vulnerability.
  • Austin: “Leo Raphael is an art dealer who sort of stays ahead of what's happening and gets his family out and the paintings disappear. And that becomes a subject of much speculation in the novel.” (04:11)
• Sauvins: Charlotte (art student) and her father Francois (haunted by WWI memories). Their perspectives highlight generational trauma and denial.
  • Austin: “There are characters who don't want to acknowledge that... because I think it was such a terrible time.” (04:57)

5. Narrative Structure

• The novel employs multiple points of view—over a dozen—to authentically represent the suspense, unpredictability, and diversity of experiences during occupation.
  • Austin: “I don't think my characters knew what they would do. We know the outcome of World War II. These are fictional characters. But I was really forced through the narrative to inhabit them, to smell what they smelled, to feel what they felt, to see what they saw and then to see what they did.” (05:35)
• Austin’s background as a playwright influences her approach, likening each character’s uncertainty to the actor’s challenge: “don't play the end.”

6. Gradual Encroachments of Oppression

• A striking reading from the novel describes how persecution arrived “gradually... so they might be called cunning,” normalizing each new horror.
  • Quote from Charlotte:
    “The occupation of Brussels was immediate, but the constraints, the impositions, the curfews, the ostracizing, the marking, the bans, the roundups, the deportations, the murders, these happened so gradually they might be called cunning. For just as you got used to one thing, there was another. It was always happening to someone else until it wasn't. And by then it was too late.” (06:29)
• This passage vividly demonstrates how societal takeover can happen incrementally, often unnoticed.

7. Personal Responsibility and Social Bonds

• Austin reflects on lessons from Vaclav Havel about upholding one’s duty within society.
  • Austin:
    “He has this notion of personal responsibility, the idea that the bonds of society are only strong if we all uphold our own part of it. And that the person who walks past a sign in a shop window that says no blacks or no Jews or no women or no gays is just as responsible as the shopkeeper who puts up the sign, who is just as responsible as the apparatchik who tells the shopkeeper to put up the sign, who is as responsible as the government official who decides that this will be done.” (07:13)

8. Contemporary Resonance

• The novel’s questions about trust, risk, and community feel especially urgent in a polarized modern world.
  • Austin:
    “In our increasingly polarized world, where you see that people hold such strong opinions and they don't even entertain or listen to contradictory opinions, and yet very often they live in communities and neighborhoods with neighbors who hold those contradictory opinions. So what if you're dependent upon those neighbors for security or food, as the residents of Plas Brugman were? Who do you trust? What will you do?” (08:34)

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the microcosm of society:
  • Andrew Limbong: “It's a microcosm of life, of society.” (00:07)
• On gradual oppression:
  • Charlotte (novel excerpt, read by Alice Austin):
    “It was always happening to someone else until it wasn't. And by then it was too late.” (06:52)
• On personal responsibility:
  • Alice Austin: “The person who walks past a sign... is just as responsible as the shopkeeper who puts up the sign... who is as responsible as the government official who decides that this will be done.” (07:18)
• On art and survival:
  • Alice Austin: “Why does art matter? These questions absolutely consumed me as I wrote the book.” (09:10)

Timestamps for Key Segments

• 00:02 — Introduction to the book and central theme
• 02:06 — Alice Austin discusses the real-life inspiration
• 03:12 — On the building as a “fortress”
• 03:58 — The Raphael family and their fate
• 04:30 — The Sauvins and generational trauma
• 05:13 — Multiple narrative voices and writing approach
• 06:29 — Reading of the startling passage about gradual oppression
• 07:01 — Discussion on societal takeover and personal responsibility
• 08:11 — Intertwined lives, survival, and helping others
• 08:34 — Modern relevance and the urgency of community

Conclusion

This engaging conversation with Alice Austin unpacks how 33 Plas Brugmann uses the micro-drama of apartment life to examine the broad sweep of history, resistance, moral courage, and the ways ordinary people—“the normies”—contribute to the fate of society. The episode is both a compelling book recommendation and a timely meditation on responsibility and community amid crisis.