The Propagandist
In the 1960s, when she is six or seven years old, Coline begins paying attention to her mother Lucie’s regular morning gatherings or rituals in their Paris apartment. While female relatives share beauty secrets and the latest gossip, they gradually slip back in time to the Nazi Occupation of France. Recalling “the bastards,” the ones who “condemned” the leader of Vichy France Marshal Pétain, the ones who “murdered” the Nazi collaborator Philippe Henriot, the women are bound together by their collective memories and the need to keep them hidden from others.
The Propagandist is an autobiographical novel by Desprairies, a historian who specializes in Germanic civilization and author of several historical accounts of the Vichy period. The book traces Lucie and other relatives who create and disseminate Nazi propaganda, design posters and write anti-Semitic slogans, and organize a 1941 exhibit that portrays Jews as interlopers and threats. It describes Lucie’s love affair with Friedrich and her wish to work alongside him as he explores the laws of nature that determine race and relegate Jews to the status of tubercular bacilli. It continues into the postwar years when Lucie cautions relatives to burn all records, stop talking about the past, be careful about words, and speak about Italy, not Germany.
The novel is written in a straightforward manner that recites facts as Lucie observes them: “What does it matter if something is true or false if you believe it to be true. Who has right on their side?” The dispassionate narrator Coline leaves conclusions—and emotion—to the reader. Extraordinary.
