Read & Reviewed by Karen (Retired Bookseller); The Postcard by Anne Berest, originally published in 2021 in French and now translated into English by Tina Kover.
A historical novel following the true story of Anne Berest's Jewish Family. The story centres around the author's mother receiving a bizarre and very distrubing postcard. During the long investigation into the postcard's origin and meaning, the reader is transported on an extraordinary journey to 1930's Europe, WW2 and the Holocaust, the oppression of Jew's in Nazi-occupied France, the dangerous work of the French Resistance movement and the chaos following liberation.
But besides family history the author explores the pain of survival and generation trauma.
I highly recommend this insightful and extraordinary moving account of a horrific and deeply disturbing period of our history.
A moving novel from the bestselling author of How to be Parisian Wherever You Are
January 2003. The Berest family receive a mysterious, unsigned postcard. On one side was an image of the Opera Garnier; on the other, the names of their relatives who were killed in Auschwitz: Ephraim, Emma, Noemie and Jacques.
Years later, Anne sought to find the truth behind this postcard. She journeys 100 years into the past, tracing the lives of her ancestors from their flight from Russia following the revolution, their journey to Latvia, Palestine, and Paris, the war and its aftermath. What emerges is a thrilling and sweeping tale that shatters her certainties about her family, her country, and herself.
At once a gripping investigation into family secrets, a poignant tale of mothers and daughters, and an enthralling portrait of 20th-century Parisian intellectual and artistic life, The Postcard tells the story of a family devastated by the Holocaust and yet somehow restored by love and the power of storytelling.
Historical fiction
Paperback
Anne Berest, Tina Kover
480 pages
H: 234mm W: 153mm
Weight: 582 grams