About the Book
Forced into a brutal concentration camp during a great war, Brodeck returns to his village at the war's end and takes up his old job of writing reports for a governmental bureau. One day a stranger comes to live in the village. His odd manner and habits arouse suspicions: His speech is formal, he takes long, solitary walks, and although he is unfailingly friendly and polite, he reveals nothing about himself. When the stranger produces drawings of the village and its inhabitants that are both unflattering and insightful, the villagers murder him. The authorities who witnessed the killing tell Brodeck to write a report that is essentially a whitewash of the incident.
As Brodeck writes the official account, he sets down his version of the truth in a separate, parallel narrative. In measured, evocative prose, he weaves into the story of the stranger his own painful history and the dark secrets the villagers have fiercely kept hidden.
Set in an unnamed time and place, "Brodeck" blends the familiar and unfamiliar, myth and history into a work of extraordinary power and resonance. Readers of J. M. Coetzee's "Disgrace," Bernhard Schlink's "The Reade, r" and Kafka will be captivated by "Brodeck."
About the Author :
PHILIPPE CLAUDEL is the author of many novels, among them "By a Slow River," which has been translated into thirty languages and was awarded the Prix Renaudot""in 2003 and the "Elle "Readers' Literary prize in 2004. His novel "La Petite Fille de Monsieur Linh" was published in 2005, and "Brodeck" won the Prix Goncourt des Lyceens in 2007. Claudel also wrote and directed the film "I've Loved You So Long" starring Kristin Scott Thomas and Elsa Zylberstein, which opened in movie theaters in the United States in the fall of 2008 and in thirty other countries around the world.
Review :
Winner of the 2010 Independent Foreign Fiction Prize!
"Although Claudel had long been respected as a novelist in France, only two of his previous books, "By a Slow River" and "Grey Souls," had been translated into English. Now his latest novel, "Brodeck," arrives like a fresh, why-haven't-we-known-him discovery, revealing him to be as dazzling on the page as he is on the screen.... "Brodeck" is the Brothers Grimm by way of Kafka.... [Claudel] audaciously approaches a subject that seems thoroughly covered and makes it fresh. His nightmarish fairy tale captures the essential, inescapable evil at the center of the Holocaust, the human urge to destroy Others ... a compulsion existing beyond time, place or politics."
--"The New York Times Book Review"
"Coming across as the love child of Bela Tarr's film "Werckmeister Harmoniak" and Gabriel Garcia Marquez's 'A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings, ' this disconcerting and darkly atmospheric novel, set in an unnamed European town secluded high in the mountains, deals with the effects of collective guilt by examining the dark secrets of its residents as they recall the hardships of war and occupation. Following the end of an unspecified war that sounds very much like WWII, protagonist Brodeck, who survived the camps by literally becoming a guard's pet (Brodeck the Dog), is reunited with his wife and daughter. After the murder of a mystical drifter, Brodeck is made to write a narrative of the events for the authorities absolving the village's inhabitants of any blame. Though there are no innocents, by the end some characters make tentative footsteps toward reclaiming their humanity. Claudel's style is very visual and evocative (he also wrote and directed the film "I've Loved You So Long"), and this novel, like the brothers Grimm fables, is full of terror, horror, and beauty and wonder."
--"Publishers Weekly ("starred review)
"A beautiful, sinister and haunting fable of persecution, resistance and su
Winner of the 2010 Independent Foreign Fiction Prize!
"Although Claudel had long been respected as a novelist in France, only two of his previous books, "By a Slow River" and "Grey Souls," had been translated into English. Now his latest novel, "Brodeck," arrives like a fresh, why-haven't-we-known-him discovery, revealing him to be as dazzling on the page as he is on the screen.... "Brodeck" is the Brothers Grimm by way of Kafka.... [Claudel] audaciously approaches a subject that seems thoroughly covered and makes it fresh. His nightmarish fairy tale captures the essential, inescapable evil at the center of the Holocaust, the human urge to destroy Others ... a compulsion existing beyond time, place or politics."
--"The New York Times Book Review"
"Coming across as the love child of Bela Tarr's film "Werckmeister Harmoniak" and Gabriel Garcia Marquez's 'A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings, ' this disconcerting and darkly atmospheric novel, set in an unnamed European town
"This is a remarkable novel, all the more so because this account of man's inhumanity to man, of coarse and brutal stupidity, of fear and surrender to evil, is nevertheless not without hope. Brodeck survives because, despite all he has experienced, he remains capable of love. It is also beautifully written, and well translated... I mentioned Kafka earlier, and the novel is as compelling as anything he wrote. In France it won the Prix Goncourt des Lyceens. The reviewer in "Le Monde "called it, simply, magnificent. And so it is."
--"The Scotsman"
