The Portrait

In his historical novel, 'The Portrait', the author takes us on a journey to post-war Belgium, in the aftermath of the First and Second World War. At the beginning of the First World War, the life of Elisabeth Renard is turned upside down when the German war machine invades neutral Belgium and covers the country with cruel massacres and reprisals. In her search for her missing fiance Christian, she finds herself in great danger, from which she can only narrowly escape. Undaunted and courageous, she continues on her path, which also leads her into the community of the Resistance. In the early 1950s, Thomas Schneider, a young civil engineer, sets out on a supposedly final business trip to Bruges. There, under ominous circumstances, he witnesses an act of violence and becomes increasingly entangled in a network of seemingly criminal activities. Obsessed with the desire to acquire a portrait of a young woman, he increasingly abandons his bourgeois existence and plunges into a dangerous adventure with an unpredictable outcome. The author compellingly traces the paths of these two lives, keeping the reader guessing for much of the way as to what will bring them together at the end.