The Propagandist - Paperback

by Cécile Desprairies (Author), Natasha Lehrer (Translator)

The New Yorker Best Books of 2024 and World Literature Today Notable Translations of 2024

"Cécile Desprairies's novel, The Propagandist, is full of so many secrets that it's a wonder she managed to write it all."--The New York Times

In a grand Paris apartment, a young girl attends gatherings regularly organized by her mother. The women talk about beauty secrets and gossip, but the mood grows dark when the past, notably World War II, comes under coded discussion in hushed tones. Years later, the silent witness to these sessions has become a prominent historian, and with this chilling autobiographical novel she sets out to unmask enigmatic figures in and around her family. Why, she seeks to understand, did the narrator's relatives zealously collaborate with the Nazi occupiers of France, even remaining for decades afterward obsessive devotees of that evil lost cause?

Author Biography

Cécile Desprairies is a specialist in Germanic civilization and a historian of the Nazi occupation of France. She is the author of several historical works about the occupation and the Vichy regime. Born in Paris in 1957, The Propagandist is her first novel.

Natasha Lehrer has translated books by Georges Bataille, Robert Desnos, Victor Segalen, Chantal Thomas and the Dalai Lama. Her co-translation of Nathalie Léger's Suite for Barbara Loden won the 2017 Scott Moncrieff Prize.