The Postcard
After a postcard without a sender arrives at her mother’s house inscribed with the names of relatives who perished at Auschwitz, life is forever changed for Anne Berest in 2003. Uncertain whether the missive is intended as a fond memento or a sinister threat, she embarks on a belated journey into the past to uncover the fates of her great-grandparents, Ephraïm and Emma Rabinovitch, as well as of her grandaunt and granduncle, Noémie and Jacques.
With the help of her mother Lélia, Anne reconstructs their biographies, a process that enables her to reconnect with her long-buried, cosmopolitan, Jewish identity. But as the reader discovers, the postcard is not the only reason why Anne reappraises her fascinating ancestry. Rather, an antisemitic incident at her daughter’s school, as well as a verbal attack on herself, prompts Anne to investigate what it means to her to be Jewish. Whilst she comes to understand that her extraordinary heritage is ingrained in her psyche, Anne learns to reconcile the seemingly contradictory strands of her provenance in the recollection of her beloved grandmother, Myriam Picabia Bouveris—last known address, Provence, France, but born Mirotchka Rabinovitch in Russia—the family’s only Holocaust survivor.
Bringing Myriam’s remarkable story to light allows Anne to examine France’s complex and controversial 20th-century history; the horrors committed by the collaborationist Vichy Government versus the heroism of a group of surrealist artists-turned-resisters, which Myriam and her first husband Vincente Picabia joined and for which they risked their lives. Equal parts Shoah testimonial, autobiographical novel, and detective mystery, complete with gumshoe investigator and graphologist, The Postcard is a brilliant addition to French Holocaust literature, a gripping work of autofiction by a third-generation, profoundly thinking descendant.
