The Propagandist

For this spellbinding debut novel, historian Desprairies draws on her family’s collaboration with the Nazis during the occupation of France in WWII. Narrator Coline pieces the story together gradually, recalling how as a young girl in 1960s Paris she often heard her mother, Lucie, disparaging Jewish people and claiming that the city’s 1944 liberation was “the end of everything.” Through research, Coline learns that Lucie worked on a German-sponsored antisemitic art exhibition during the war, and that her great-uncle Gaston, a newspaper editor, published German propaganda. Coline also discovers photographs of her aunt and grandmother at the German embassy. Another great-uncle, Raphaël, financed his stylish lifestyle by sleeping with wealthy married men, including Nazis. After Raphaël died, the family inherited treasures stolen from displaced Jewish families. Through it all, Lucie remained loyal to her first husband, a Nazi geneticist, whose grave she regularly visited, prompting her second husband, Coline’s father, to request that his own gravestone make note of Lucie’s divided loyalties. With a sardonic tone and an uncompromising vision, Desprairies lays bare the inequities of Vichy France. This will stay with readers. (Oct.)