INFORME DE BRODECK, EL (original 2007; edition 2009)

A remarkable book, an allegorical fable that reads at times like Kafka and at times like Primo Levi. It clearly depicts the Holocaust in Central Europe, notwithstanding the somewhat thin veneer of a quasi-mythical setting outside of any particular time or place. The narrator has a combination of naivete, sophistication, insight, and apathy that is memorable. And perhaps the most memorable scene of dead horses since Anna Karenina. Overall highly recommended. ( )

This book begins as quietly as a whisper, albeit with a murder, and I almost thought it was going to be boring. But the author so cleverly peels away layer after layer of the facade of the idyllic mountain village in which this novel is set, that I was stunned by the rotten core ultimately revealed.

Brodeck has just returned to the village after surviving an unnamed war in a horrific prison camp. He endured the dangers and degradations of his internment by focusing on his beloved wife Amelia back in the village. Shortly after his return, the 'Anderer' (the Other) arrives in the village. It is the murder of the Anderer that occurs in the opening pages of the novel, and Brodeck is required to write an official report to explain the 'Ereignies', 'a curious word, full of mists and ghosts; it means more or less, 'the thing that happened,'...a word to describe the indescribable.'

This book is a fable about how and why people do evil things; it is about the innate fear of the unknown, even the unknown within ourselves, and it is about remembering, not forgetting. ( )

Is collaboration in wartime an act of self-preservation or an opportunity to let out one’s secret distrust of The Other? Is collusion a collective, social act or a collection of single, personal decisions? How do you live with betrayal?

These are some of the questions explored in Philippe Claudel’s book, Brodeck’s Report. In a fairy tale village in the woods, a stranger has been murdered. Brodeck, a man recently returned from the camps, is asked to represent the village and write an official report of what occurred. At the same time, Brodeck writes a secret report, in his own voice, about what he learns and about his own life and the decisions he has made. The book begins:

I’m Brodeck and I had nothing to do with it.
I insist on that. I want everyone to know.
I had no part in it, and once I learned what had happened, I would have preferred never to mention it again, I would have liked to bind my memory fast and keep it that way, as subdued and still as a weasel in an iron trap.
But the others forced me.

From the first lines, before the reader even knows what has happened, she is asked to take sides. Is Brodeck innocent? Should some memories be allowed to fade away, or is there a moral imperative or human compulsion to share the truth?

I loved this book for the very ambiguity that makes the answers to these questions so difficult. In haunting imagery and beautiful language, Claudel leads Brodeck to the brink of the abyss and asks the reader to join him in looking in. A Holocaust novel without ever saying the words, Brodeck’s Report is easily one of the best books I’ve read this year, and I recommend it for its plot, its language, and most importantly for its ability to make me think. ( )

A mysterious, flamboyant character arrives at an isolated French village in the border with Germany shortly after the WWII has finished. He speaks little but observes everybody carefully and makes many notes in a book that he always carries with him. Although he is welcomed, little by little the villagers turn against him, the outsider, who acts as a mirror of themselves and their recent shameful history. Brodeck, a survivor of a concentration camp, is ordered to write a report on the events which culminate with the death of the outsider, whose name is never revealed. He tells the story in an oblique manner, while narrating his own life and that of those close to him. Claudel manages to write a very original novel on historical facts which have been the topic of much recent literature. Although the plot is grounded in clear historical events, the narration has an atemporal feeling, slightly dreamlike, like a fable. This is a thought provoking, poetic book. ( )

'I had nothing to do with it.'

That's what the title character says in the opening sentence of Philippe Claudel's novel Brodeck. And while Brodeck is right, he has been given the task of detailing how the small village in which he lives felt it had no choice but to kill an outsider.

There are several layers of collective guilt in this excellent novel. Although Claudel takes pains to never explicitly say so, the story appears set in a small village bordering Germany after the conclusion of the Second World War. Brodeck spent much of the war in a concentration camp. Something horrible happened in his village while it was occupied. The unusual stranger who appears in town after the war and Brodeck's return is known almost instantly as De Anderer, 'the Other.' When the Other has a showing of the portraits and landscapes he paints while in the village, they seem to hint that he knows the secret behind the community's guilty conscience.

When the outsider is murdered, the town wants Brodeck to write a report on 'the whole story,' explaining why the village acted as it did and so any authority reviewing the report will 'understand and forgive.' Translated from French by John Cullen, Brodeck is not the report. Rather, it is the story of writing the report, a story that takes us with Brodeck to the concentration camp, inside what happened in the village during the war and the circumstances surrounding the Other's murder. Brodeck refers to the last as the Ereigniës, 'the thing that happened.'

Yet much of what takes place over the course of the book could also easily be called the Ereigniës. Heavy on symbolism and allegory (some might say too heavy), there is is plenty of guilt to go around in this isolated and insular village. With it, a reader will ponder issues of not just evil and fear but survival, hope and being an outsider. Powerful and well-written, Brodeck is a worthy read.

(Originally posted at A Progressive on the Prairie)