I do not know if what I am going to narrate has happened before, or if it is happening today, this hour, now, this moment. Or will it happen later, tomorrow or the next day, very soon or very far away? But, I know, it always happens. where? In the world, here, there and everywhere, but what matters to me is that it is happening here in this place, my country, and in the city that I could not leave, for countless reasons. The city that, I repeat, I cannot die away from, nor can I live away from it. with whom? With me, it is the first answer, because it is known about me that I only write about myself, or something that happened with another person I know well, or perhaps with a person I know briefly, or with a person I created from a mixture of people, or a person I made up completely. However, as a technical solution to this dilemma, I see that this time, it happened to you specifically, you who are now reading what I write and suspect that it is about you, then little by little you will know that it is about you. Because literally, or almost literally, it happened to you, and it applies to you only.
It happens that a story creeps into your depths, shaking you violently and challenging you to turn away from it. This is exactly what happened to me with the story of the Nightingale. The truth is that I did everything in my power not to write this novel, but my research into the subject of World War II led me to the story of the young woman who made an escape route from occupied France, and I could not escape from it. Thus, her story became the starting point, and in reality it is a story of heroism, risk, and unbridled courage. I could not distract myself from her; I kept digging, exploring, and reading, until this story led me to other stories that were no less amazing. It was impossible for me to ignore those stories. Thus, I found myself under the weight of one question haunting me, a question that remains as valid today as it was seventy years ago: Under what circumstances would I risk my life as a wife and mother? More importantly, under what circumstances would I risk my child's life to save a stranger? This question occupies a major position in the novel The Nightingale. In love, we discover who we want to be; In war, we discover who we are. Perhaps sometimes we do not want to know what we can do to survive our lives. In war, women's stories have always been ignored and forgotten. Women usually return home from the battlefields, say nothing, and then move on with their lives. The Nightingale is a novel about these women, and the bold choices they made to save their children and maintain the lifestyle they had become accustomed to. Kristen Hannah
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