Skip to Main Content (Press Enter)
Sleeping with the Enemy by Hal Vaughan
Add Sleeping with the Enemy to bookshelf
Add to Bookshelf

Sleeping with the Enemy

Best Seller
Sleeping with the Enemy by Hal Vaughan
Audiobook Download
Aug 16, 2011 | ISBN 9780307969200 | 510 Minutes

Buy from Other Retailers:

See All Formats (2) +
  • $18.00

    Aug 07, 2012 | ISBN 9780307475916

    Buy from Other Retailers:

  • Aug 16, 2011 | ISBN 9780307957030

    Buy from Other Retailers:

  • Aug 16, 2011 | ISBN 9780307969200

    510 Minutes

    Buy from Other Retailers:

Buy the Audiobook Download:

Listen to a sample from Sleeping with the Enemy

Product Details

Praise

“[Hal Vaughan] ably demonstrates that Chanel was far from an innocent victim of circumstance during the second world war but a fully fledged Abwehr (German secret service) agent with her own number and codename: Westminster (no doubt a nod to her one-time lover, the Duke of Westminster).  . . Vaughan, who writes with welcome economy and flair, deserves a lot of credit for finally unraveling the strands of Chanel’s deeply deceptive personality.”
—Tobias Grey, Financial Times

“[Sleeping with the Enemy]
distinguishes itself from the many other Chanel biographies by tackling the dicey subject of Gabrielle Chanel’s activities during World War II . . . This is a frank and unsentimental portrait of a figure that fashion writers are nearly incapable of criticizing. .  . While Vaughan’s discussions of Chanel’s contributions to fashion add nothing new to the extensive literature on her, he more than makes up for it with his impressive research and the never-before-seen information that he has unearthed about her wartime activities. . . . What Sleeping with the Enemy offers is a more rounded look at a figure who has been over-studied and under-examined.”
Isabel Schwab, The New Republic online 

“[A] compelling chronicle of Coco Chanel . . . a different Chanel from any you’ll find at the company store . . . by no means the account of an emerging style but a tale of how a single-minded woman faced history, made hard choices, connived, lied, collaborated and used every imaginable wile to survive and see that the people she cared about survived with her . . . Vaughan has gleaned many of the details of Chanel’s collaboration from documents that were scattered for years throughout European archives . . . It’s an astonishing story . . gripping . . . provocative . . . riveting history.”
 —Marie Arana, The Washington Post
 
 “Chanel’s war years, as explored by Hal Vaughan, are as camera-ready and as neck-deep in melodrama as Quentin Tarantino’s “Inglourious Basterds,” and just as hard to forget now that they’re exposed.”
—David D’Arcy, San Francisco Chronicle

“Hal Vaughan has done a stupendous job of research . . . Vaughan draws a brilliant portrait . . a terrific and fascinating story. . . wonderfully told, and full of great characters. . . Vaughan brings her to life so vividly that we understand why no less a judge than André Malraux said that “from this century in France only three names will remain: de Gaulle, Picasso, and Chanel.”. . . It is that rarest of good reads, a biography about a famous person with a surprise on every page. Nancy Mitford, I think, would have loved it, and written a wonderful letter to Evelyn Waugh about it!”
  —Michael Korda, The Daily Beast

Looking for More Great Reads?
21 Books You’ve Been Meaning to Read
Back to Top