A moving journey of discovery, The Postcard is a semi-biographical account by French author Anne Berest. When her family receive a postcard in 2003 that includes the names of four family descendants killed in Auschwitz, it begins a quest to find out who it was sent by and the reason why.
As Anne begins to delve further into her family’s past – particularly her grandmother Myriam, the only member of her family to survive the Holocaust – the story moves from beginnings in Russia to present-day Paris. Unearthing much that would have remained hidden if not for her mother Lelia’s meticulous archive of documents and certain memoirs that became public after the war, Berest is able to piece together fragments of her ancestors’ history, reimagining the war period and its aftermath.
Winner of the Choix Goncourt Prize, The Postcard is a meticulously researched and heartbreaking novel. The story from the past is intercepted with the future, and here Anne’s relationships are explored – demonstrating the shadow the family’s history has had over the years, particularly in relation to her Jewish heritage.
Powerful storytelling is on show despite the sadness and sensitive nature of the subject: there is hope for the future and the family relationships fortified during the process. Both devastating and captivating, this is an immensely important story which needed to be told.
The Postcard, Anne Berest [trans. Tina Kover] (Europa Editions)
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words RHIANON HOLLEY