Non­fic­tion

Code Name Madeleine: A Sufi Spy in Nazi-Occu­pied Paris

  • From the Publisher
September 1, 2019

Code Name Madeleine tells the cap­ti­vat­ing sto­ry of the valiant Noor Inay­at Khan, daugh­ter of an Indi­an Sufi mys­tic and unlike­ly World War II hero­ine. Care­ful­ly dis­tilled from dozens of inter­views, new­ly dis­cov­ered man­u­scripts, offi­cial doc­u­ments, and per­son­al let­ters, Code Name Madeleine is a deeply researched his­to­ry and a thrilling trib­ute to Noor Inay­at Khan. Noor’s ideals were ground­ed in Sufis’ equiv­a­lent of tikkun olam – chival­ry that upheld self­less­ness, jus­tice, and duty as sacred as reli­gion.” Raised in the 1920s near Paris, Noor was a musi­cian and writer, ded­i­cat­ed to her fam­i­ly’s spir­i­tu­al val­ues of har­mo­ny and tol­er­ance. She did not seem des­tined for wartime hero­ism, but Ger­many’s treat­ment of Jews con­vinced her to aban­don Gand­hi’s paci­fism. Noor joined the British Spe­cial Oper­a­tions Exec­u­tive and trained in espi­onage, sab­o­tage, and recon­nais­sance. For cru­cial months of the war, Noor was the only radio oper­a­tor in Paris send­ing crit­i­cal infor­ma­tion to Lon­don, sig­nif­i­cant­ly aid­ing the suc­cess of the Allied land­ing on D‑Day. Code-named Madeleine, she became a high-val­ue tar­get for the Gestapo. Noor was even­tu­al­ly cap­tured and exe­cut­ed at Dachau a few months before the end of the war.

Discussion Questions