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Brodeck's Report (2007)

by Philippe Claudel(Favorite Author)

3.99 of 5 Votes: 5

ISBN

1906694680 (ISBN13: 9781906694685)

languge

English

genre

Historical Fiction

publisher

Maclehose

review 1: An unsettling fable set in a nameless place and time (that feels very much like Lorraine shortly after the end of the Second World War), Brodeck's Report is a study of the nature of crowds, the fear of the other and the ease with which evil can both triumph and be accepted as a normal part of everyday life. Winner of the Prix Goncourt in 2011, this English translation is a stark and powerful read. The horror of what has already happened to Brodeck and the fate that befalls the Anderer (the stranger who comes from nowhere to his village and reveals some unpalatable home truths) made all the more hard to bear when set against the beautifully described natural beauty of the village and its surroundings. C
review 2: This is absolutely superb. It is the tale of outs... moreiders in an isolated village, and how no matter how many decades an outsider spends in such a village, he will always be an outsider, and when push comes to shove, the outsider is the first to go. So what do we have here? Brodeck is the one educated man in this village somewhere in the Alsace region of France, in the period between the world wars. He had arrived there as a child and the villagers, recognising his academic potential, paid for his post-school education. When the German army marched into the village in 1940, the villagers denounced him as an outsider and he was dispatched into the concentration camps, where by means of sheer will and self-abnegation he survives and returns to the village, to find that his family has been raped and ruined. For some reason he continues to live in the village, and all the guilt and sins of the villagers are somehow buried into their subconscious. But of course this doesn't last long - when a colourful visitor appears in their midst and settles down amongst them and reflects the poisons in their natures back to them in a series of innocent paintings, the villagers kill him. As an educated man, it's Brodeck (who had nothing to do with it) tasked with writing up an account of events to the judicial authorities to exonerate the villagers' action. Brodeck complies but also writes up a separate account for his own sanity, and that is what the readers see. All manner of sickness dwells in the hearts of men, and no amount of goodness can keep it at bay. Eventually, the wicked and the strong tend to win. This is a powerful work. less

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