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Le rapport de Brodeck by Philippe Claudel
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Le rapport de Brodeck (original 2007; edition 2009)

by Philippe Claudel

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9155423,008 (4.14)103
Winner of the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize 2010 A murder investigation in post-war France becomes an exploration of the legacy of German occupation. From his village in post-war France, Brodeck makes his solitary journeys into the mountains to collect data on the natural environment. Day by day he also reconstructs his own life, all but lost in the years he spent in a camp during the war. No-one had expected to see him again. One day, a flamboyant stranger rides into the village, upsetting the fragile balance of everyday life. Soon he is named the Anderer, "the other", and tensions rise until, one night, the newcomer is murdered. Brodeck is instructed to write an account of the events leading to his death, but his report delivers much more than the bare facts: it becomes the story of a community coming to terms with the legacy of enemy occupation. In a powerful narrative of exceptional fascination, Brodeck's Report explores the very limits of humanity.… (more)
Member:Eric73
Title:Le rapport de Brodeck
Authors:Philippe Claudel
Info:LGF (2009), Broché, 374 pages
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Brodeck's Report by Philippe Claudel (2007)

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» See also 103 mentions

English (19)  Dutch (12)  French (10)  Spanish (9)  Catalan (1)  German (1)  All languages (52)
Showing 1-5 of 19 (next | show all)
I have thought for a very long time about how to describe this book and I cannot do so at all easily. That is, in fact, a tribute to just how extraordinary this book is. A dark allegory about fear and tolerance and guilt...almost fable-like. I have liked every book by Claudel I have read but this one is exceptional. There are some very brief incidents/stories within the novel that are so indelible that I will remember them forever. His ability to create real people with real psychologies is remarkable. The adjective "chilling" is often used to describe a work that is exceptionally horrifying. The word is inadequate to Claudel's achievement which is all the more successful for being written in such low-key, modest--almost lyrical--language.
And I think one reason it is successful (or so successful) is that Claudel is extremely careful to strip the narrative of identifiying references, though it is abundantly clear that this story recounts a Holocaust experience. But even its setting, though likely to be eastern France, is disguised and never named. I don’t believe the word “Nazi” or “Jew” ever appears. Nor, indeed, do “German” or “French” or “Russian.” Claudel indeed goes to great lengths to universalize his story. (I think it is one small measure of his success that the five-star reviews on Goodreads are in so many languages, from Dutch to Arabic, Lithuanian to Portuguese, French and Spanish to Hebrew and Vietnamese.)
The story, and it’s an extraordinary one, is simple: Brodeck must write a report for the authorities about the Anderer (the “Other”), a stranger who came to their little town and was murdered. In fact, the story is about Brodeck and it is Brodeck who is the “Other,” as is made clear by his own story. I have not read many novels in fifty-plus years of reading fiction that forced me to think about the questions and issues Claudel raises. But this is one of them. Claudel is merciless and if you read this book, you cannot avoid thinking about these questions. ( )
  Gypsy_Boy | Aug 25, 2023 |
I am Brodeck, and I had nothing to do with it.
So begins Philippe Claudel's brilliant novel about xenophobia, narrated by the eponymous Brodeck. Of an ambiguous national identity, living in an unspecified country just on the heels of World War II, Brodeck is the outsider par excellence: a man who has spent time in the concentration camps to return home to the same villagers to find their attitudes toward him altered, his position always uncertain and unclear. This is also underscored by his changed familial relations upon returning from the camps.

Brodeck begins post de facto: The "it" with which Brodeck claims emphatically that he has had nothing to do only becomes clear by the end of the text. An incident has occurred, and the villagers have unanimously enlisted Brodeck to write a report of the events leading up to it, an act of rhetorical self-defense for the village. The collective guilt and shame the villagers feel to make such a report necessary are juxtaposed in liquid prose with Brodeck's own individualized feelings of guilt and shame, a "conflict between knowledge and ignorance, between solitude and numbers."

As he undertakes to write this report ("a cross which was not made for my shoulders and which didn't concern me"), Claudel allows Brodeck to tap into questions of reality versus fiction, what makes something true or false (depending on the amount of people who claim something is true despite it being far from it), and also a kind of Freudian analysis of group psychology: the group's word is gospel, and Brodeck is being forced to write for a group of which he is not truly a part. How can a person speak for another, or for a group of others, when one's subjective truth is at variance with the account expected of those who hold and wield power?
I thought about History, capitalized, and about my history, our history. Do those who write the first know anything about the second? Why do some people retain in their memory what others have forgotten or never seen? Which is right: he who can't reconcile himself to leaving the past in obscurity, or he who thrusts into darkness everything that doesn't suit him?
Brodeck's work on the report dredges up memories of his past—not only are we privy to his pre-war memories, but we also experience along with him a resurgence of violence as his horrific piecing together of events at the camp which cause him to realize that he has been lying to himself: "of all dangers, memory's one of the most terrible." As such, we see made manifest the latent and repressed content of an individual's life, brought to the level of consciousness, a task that is related to his vocation as a writer and one that requires Brodeck's narrative to follow no logical in the way of temporality, but one that also involved a kind of subterfuge (even from oneself):
I keep going backward and forward, jumping over time like a hurdle, getting lost on tangents, and maybe even, without wishing to, concealing what's essential.
While Brodeck becomes more conscious of his own life narrative, and his complicity, this is a self-awareness that Claudel develops alongside a group of others who are asking him to do the exact opposite—namely, to repress, to document falsities, to erase, to render into nothingness. Claudel's prose is fluid, brisk, and lucid as he allows the reader, by way of Brodeck, to experience revelation and annihilation, individual growth and group oppression:
I think we've become, and will remain until the day we die, the memory of humanity destroyed. We're wounds that will never heal.
I cannot recommend this book highly enough: it will stay with you long after you've finished journeying along with Brodeck, haunting you, making you ponder the nature of subjective truth as unwaveringly and as bravely as Brodeck does here, reconciling the horrific with the sublime: "Sometimes you love your own scars." ( )
  proustitute | Apr 2, 2023 |
לא בדיוק הצלחתי לגבש דיעה על הספר. אולי המילה המתאימה ביותר שאני יכול למצוא היא ספר ראוי. מצד אחד סיפור מרתק למדי על משהו דמוי שואה, על שגעון של המונים, על שנאת הזר והשונה. מצד שני, משהו חסר, נורא רוצה להיות קפקא אבל הוא לא. אפילו לא ירזי קוזינסקי. משהו חסר, הניצוץ של הגאוניות שהופך ספר ראוי לספר טוב. אולי הנסיון להפוך את הדברים למעורפלים ולגנריים הוא שפוגע, אולי הניסיון להחביא את המיקום המדויק במקום ושפה מומצאים, משהו לא מצלצל אמין לגמרי. ( )
  amoskovacs | Feb 3, 2017 |
Very powerful novel - almost fairy-tale like - about a European village after WWII told from the perspective of a man who has returned from a concentration camp. Spooky and sad, but beautifully written and very thought-provoking. Shades of Kafka, Coetzee, and Durenmatt's The Visit.
Claudel is the writer and director of I Have loved You So Long. ( )
  laurenbufferd | Nov 14, 2016 |
Actually 3.5 stars. I reserved this book months ago from the library and now that I finally got it, I can't remember why I reserved it. It took me quite a while to get into it but in the end I really liked it. It is set in a European village after "a great war" and told the story of what happened to Brodeck and his village because of the war and the fears created by the war. It's hard to explain what it's really about. I would say it is a fairly dark story that takes a while to come together, but in the end comes together in a quite disturbing and depressing way. With every turn of events I just found myself wondering how humanity can be so cruel and fearful of outsiders and differences. Not exactly an uplifting read, but interesting and well written. ( )
  beckyface | Nov 22, 2015 |
Showing 1-5 of 19 (next | show all)
Uncertainty is a major theme of Claudel's novel, which is both fable-like and documentary in style. While it is concerned with difference and intolerance as abstract, universal themes, Brodeck's Report is also a historical novel about a camp survivor (Brodeck) and the effect of Nazism on a specific place, assumed to be a German dialect-speaking part of Alsace Lorraine.
added by kidzdoc | editThe Guardian, Giles Foden (Mar 21, 2009)
 
“La estupidez es una enfermedad que casa con el miedo. Una y otro se alimentan mutuamente, creando una gangrena que sólo pide propagarse…” Philippe Claudel
Apenas acabada la guerra, una muerte rompe la tranquilidad de un pequeño pueblo perdido en las montañas. El único extranjero del lugar, que un día llego al pueblo, vestido a la antigua, con gran lujo y acompañado de un caballo y un asno, a quien llaman Der Anderer —el Otro, en alemán—, ha sido asesinado y todos los hombres de la localidad se confiesan autores del crimen. Todos menos Brodeck.
Esta historia no constata la realidad de los hechos, pues los testigos, abren a sus ojos diferentes puntos de vista, que la camuflan, para hacerla torpe, innoble y ciertamente falsa.
added by esabateq | editshvoong.com
 

» Add other authors (16 possible)

Author nameRoleType of authorWork?Status
Claudel, Philippeprimary authorall editionsconfirmed
Cullen, JohnTranslatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Sarkar, ManikTranslatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed

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Epigraph
I'm nothing, I know it, but my nothing comprises a little bit of everything. - Victor Hugo, The Rhine
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For all those who think they're nothing

For my wife and my daughter, without whom I wouldn't be much
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I'm Brodeck and I had nothing to do with it.
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Winner of the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize 2010 A murder investigation in post-war France becomes an exploration of the legacy of German occupation. From his village in post-war France, Brodeck makes his solitary journeys into the mountains to collect data on the natural environment. Day by day he also reconstructs his own life, all but lost in the years he spent in a camp during the war. No-one had expected to see him again. One day, a flamboyant stranger rides into the village, upsetting the fragile balance of everyday life. Soon he is named the Anderer, "the other", and tensions rise until, one night, the newcomer is murdered. Brodeck is instructed to write an account of the events leading to his death, but his report delivers much more than the bare facts: it becomes the story of a community coming to terms with the legacy of enemy occupation. In a powerful narrative of exceptional fascination, Brodeck's Report explores the very limits of humanity.

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