The Propagandist

by Cécile Desprairies, Natasha Lehrer (Translator)

Overview

The New Yorker Best Books of 2024 and World Literature Today Notable Translations of 2024

"Cécile Desprairies's novel, The Propagandist, is full of so many secrets that it's a wonder she managed to write it all."—The New York Times

In a grand Paris apartment, a young girl attends gatherings regularly organized by her mother. The women talk about beauty secrets and gossip, but the mood grows dark when the past, notably World War II, comes under coded discussion in hushed tones. Years later, the silent witness to these sessions has become a prominent historian, and with this chilling autobiographical novel she sets out to unmask enigmatic figures in and around her family. Why, she seeks to understand, did the narrator's relatives zealously collaborate with the Nazi occupiers of France, even remaining for decades afterward obsessive devotees of that evil lost cause?

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781954404267
Publisher:	New Vessel Press
Publication date:	10/08/2024
Pages:	208
Product dimensions:	5.20(w) x 7.90(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

Cécile Desprairies is a specialist in Germanic civilization and a historian of the Nazi occupation of France. She is the author of several historical works about the occupation and the Vichy regime. Born in Paris in 1957, The Propagandist is her first novel.

Natasha Lehrer has translated books by Georges Bataille, Robert Desnos, Victor Segalen, Chantal Thomas and the Dalai Lama. Her co-translation of Nathalie Léger’s Suite for Barbara Loden won the 2017 Scott Moncrieff Prize.

Editorial Reviews

08/05/2024

For this spellbinding debut novel, historian Desprairies draws on her family’s collaboration with the Nazis during the occupation of France in WWII. Narrator Coline pieces the story together gradually, recalling how as a young girl in 1960s Paris she often heard her mother, Lucie, disparaging Jewish people and claiming that the city’s 1944 liberation was “the end of everything.” Through research, Coline learns that Lucie worked on a German-sponsored antisemitic art exhibition during the war, and that her great-uncle Gaston, a newspaper editor, published German propaganda. Coline also discovers photographs of her aunt and grandmother at the German embassy. Another great-uncle, Raphaël, financed his stylish lifestyle by sleeping with wealthy married men, including Nazis. After Raphaël died, the family inherited treasures stolen from displaced Jewish families. Through it all, Lucie remained loyal to her first husband, a Nazi geneticist, whose grave she regularly visited, prompting her second husband, Coline’s father, to request that his own gravestone make note of Lucie’s divided loyalties. With a sardonic tone and an uncompromising vision, Desprairies lays bare the inequities of Vichy France. This will stay with readers. (Oct.)

Publishers Weekly

"In her debut novel, a historian of Vichy France tackles her family's real-life collaboration during the Second World War . . . The result is at once a ghost story, a tale of amour fou, a settling of accounts, and, one senses, a deeply personal act of expiation . . . allowing readers to identify with the human foibles of characters on the wrong side of history, while never excusing them."—The New Yorker

"Cécile Desprairies's novel, The Propagandist, is full of so many secrets that it's a wonder she managed to write it all . . . The book takes an insider's perspective on occupied France's collaboration with Nazi Germany during World War II."—The New York Times

"This haunting autobiographical novel shows that the Nazi occupation of France is not an event in the distant past but part of family histories and memories that still go unspoken. Cécile Desprairies has written a brave and timely book."—Ruth Ben-Ghiat, author of Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present

"The Propagandist is a fist-in-your-face cautionary tale. A thinly veiled fictional autobiography, it covers the genesis, blossoming, demise, and aftermath of one of France's most painful episodes: namely, French collaboration during World War II . . . The smooth translation does justice to a Greek drama of emotional entrapment and release."—World Literature Today

"Above all a love story: a blazing and uneasy romance with fascism . . . an eerie reminder of how deeply entrenched fascism remains in Europe. In recent decades, with the rise of far-right parties across the continent—and notably in Germany—this political tide has felt like quaint regression, doubling back on old and tired history, a defeated cause. But The Propagandist suggests that Nazism has never really faded."—Lux Magazine

"The Propagandist is a tale of Vichy and a return of the French repressed that hits shelves just as the old demons stretch their limbs. A work of sly genre, it slips between fact and fiction to try to capture the truth of French collaboration with the Third Reich . . . an autobiographical story unafraid of the darkness under the City of Light."—The New York Sun

"For this spellbinding debut novel, historian Desprairies draws on her family's collaboration with the Nazis . . . With a sardonic tone and an uncompromising vision, Desprairies lays bare the inequities of Vichy France. This will stay with readers."—Publishers Weekly

"The Propagandist shows why historical fiction matters, how stories breathe life into forgotten moments. Through the lens of one family, Desprairies' narrator, a child, reveals her mother's collaborationist past under the Nazi occupation of France. This haunting tale stayed with me."—Cara Black, author of Three Hours in Paris

"An astute depiction of the occupation of France from the perspective of the collaborators, offering rare insight into the mindset of those all too eager to serve the Nazi cause."—Professor Ronald C. Rosbottom, author of When Paris Went Dark: The City of Light Under German Occupation, 1940-1944

"Superbly well told . . . Desprairies tells these stories in an assured style, with occasional moments of unexpected lyricism through Natasha Lehrer's resourceful translation."—The Irish Times

"Cécile Desprairies' extraordinary work is a cross between the dispassionate inquiry of a historian and a family memoir . . . stand[s] out from the growing library of works focused on the Nazi era . . . Her readers . . . cannot but be mesmerized."—The Arts Fuse

"Refreshing and original . . . This is not a novel of finger-pointing, but rather one of curiosity and exploration. What makes people align themselves with evil? Or more, what makes it possible for people to be blind to the evil they adopt?"—New York Journal of Books

"In Cécile Desprairies's disqueting historical novel The Propagandist, a woman reflects on her mother's experiences as a World War II collaborator . . . The novel has a serpentine tension . . . reveals a twisted legacy of wartime rationalization and collusion."—Foreword Reviews

"A sobering account of the confusion and damage wrought by unbridled ideology."—Kirkus Reviews

"An autobiographical novel by Desprairies, a historian who specializes in Germanic civilization and author of several accounts of the Vichy period. The book traces Lucie and other relatives who create and disseminate Nazi propaganda, design posters and write anti-Semitic slogans, and organize a 1941 exhibit that portrays Jews as interlopers and threats . . . Extraordinary."—The Historical Novels Review

"Fascinating and well-told tale . . . often jaw-dropping . . . It is an impressive, vivid picture, well-supported by the narrative voice and approach."—The Complete Review

"The Propagandist is an intriguing and sometimes shocking autobiographical novel about Vichy France. Desprairies reveals the anti-Semitic sentiment that seethed in France long before the Nazis arrived. Although she is a historian, she has a novelist's eye for enchanting, if often chilling, characters."—The Common

"In The Propagandist, Desprairies challenges the reader to inhabit a morally fraught protagonist. Why would someone collaborate with the Nazis? the novel asks. Who would do such a thing? . . . Poetic and immersive, evoking a lost era while refusing to romanticize it . . . this novel is filled to the brim with questions about the nature of history, loss, and restitution."—Full Stop

"Somewhere between investigative inquiry and cathartic tale … the historian-novelist seeks neither to explain, forgive, or condemn. She simply writes, describes—unvarnished and without pretense. ‘If literature distances itself from evil, it becomes dull,’ wrote Georges Bataille. And becomes fascinating when it gets close to it.”—Le Figaro

“Cécile Desprairies breathes new life into moldy old France where the ‘all so normal’ collaborators stuck together after the war in tenacious silence that still endures. She succeeds with the toughness of a historian who's had enough, having suffered the pain of a descendant determined to put an end to the lies."—Le Point

"A portrait of a woman, a clan, and a constellation of eccentric characters,The Propagandist is also an implacable assessment of a France that has failed to fully examine its conscience."—L'Humanité

From the Publisher

2024-08-03
A French historian explores the secrets her family held for decades after World War II.

Coline, Desprairies’ questioning narrator, grew up in 1960s Paris with an enigmatic mother prone to secrecy and inexplicable behavior. The youngest of Lucie’s three children, Coline was often present when a group of her mother’s female relatives would gather in the mornings to talk about beauty, fashion, and their lives as they also made oblique references to some past events that seemed to bind them together. As time passes, Coline pieces together the reason for the secrecy: Her family had collaborated with France’s Nazi occupiers. She traces the work of family members in the Occupation propaganda efforts, including her mother’s enthusiastic talent for sloganeering. Lucie’s first, youthful marriage was driven as much by Nazi ideology as romance. Her memories of and devotion to the late Friedrich loom large in the narrative. (Her second husband, Charles—Coline’s father—appears cipherlike in comparison until an uncharacteristic and unequivocal late-in-the-proceedings show of gumption.) Coline’s matter-of-fact recounting of the familial facts she began gathering, if not understanding, during childhood includes episodes of casual cruelty to Jews and a generalized antisemitism, as well as venal self-interest. Desprairies, a specialist in Germanic civilization and a historian of the Nazi occupation of France, provides extensive background about the shifting alliances and political parties in play during the war years. The narrative is saturated with references to regional French history and notable French wartime figures. Ironically, Coline—a proxy for Desprairies—confesses experiencing youthful confusion about who were the “good guys” and who were the “bad” due to her family’s allegiances.

A sobering account of the confusion and damage wrought by unbridled ideology.

Kirkus Reviews