The Postcard by Anne Berest

Winner of the Choix Goncourt Prize, Anne Berest’s The Postcard is a vivid portrait of twentieth-century Parisian intellectual and artistic life, an enthralling investigation into family secrets, and poignant tale of a Jewish family devastated by the Holocaust and partly restored through the power of storytelling.

January, 2003. Together with the usual holiday cards, an anonymous postcard is delivered to the Berest family home. On the front, a photo of the Opéra Garnier in Paris. On the back, the names of Anne Berest’s maternal great-grandparents, Ephraïm and Emma, and their children, Noémie and Jacques—all killed at Auschwitz.

Fifteen years after the postcard is delivered, Anne, the heroine of this novel, is moved to discover who sent it and why. Aided by her chain-smoking mother, family members, friends, associates, a private detective, a graphologist, and many others, she embarks on a journey to discover the fate of the Rabinovitch family: their flight from Russia following the revolution, their journey to Latvia, Palestine, and Paris. What emerges is a moving saga that shatters long-held certainties about Anne’s family, her country, and herself.

REVIEWS

“Moving…Ms. Berest has done her research, artfully weaving grim facts and figures into her family history…Let’s hope that a book like this, which encompasses both the monstrosities of the past and the dangers of the present, will guard us from complacency.”—Heller McAlpin, The Wall Street Journal

“In what feels like a literary magic trick, Berest transforms her own family’s complex and heartbreaking Holocaust history into a novel that masterfully blends elements of drama, mystery and philosophy. It’s propulsive yet deep—an intimate, exacting contemplation of loss that somehow ends in love.”—Kate Tuttle, People Magazine

“Stunning...[The Postcard] leaves us wondering whether the opposite of memory is not forgetting, but rather indifference.”—Leslie Camhi, The New Yorker

PRODUCT DETAILS
Hardcover Edition
Publisher: Europa Editions
ISBN: 978-1609458386
Pages: 464