The Postcard: The international bestseller by Anne Berest

Bookseller Review by Valerie:

‘Anne Berest is a prize winning French author who alchemises the biographical sweep of her family history from the pogroms of Russia in 1919 to their lives in the supposedly safe haven of Paris in the 1930s, into a compelling novel narrated by her real self, a well known Parisian writer in the 21st century. Intrigued by the chance arrival of a postcard bearing the names of her family members murdered in Auschwitz, she explores the long hand of history, geography and politics that led to that moment and brings to life most vividly both those who died and her own grandmother who survived by chance

and whose courageous acts while in hiding had been previously completely unknown. The pathos of those lost lives told by a descendant brought up in safety in the same city runs through this brilliant book with painful clarity.’