Brodeck

A powerful and moving novel about the ravages war and the need to tell the truth, even in the face of adversity.
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After the close of a great war, a mysterious stranger arrives in a small European village. He is an artist and he begins sketching the villagers, showing the painful reality of the crimes and betrayals the war left in its wake. Consumed by distrust, the villagers conspire and murder him. The authorities commission Brodeck, a timid, low-level bureaucrat, to write a report that essentially whitewashes the incident. Brodeck agrees to write the official account, but he simultaneously sets down his version of the incident in a parallel narrative, which interweaves his own horrific experiences as a prisoner of war, the truth about the stranger’s disappearance, and the dark secrets the villagers have fought fiercely to keep hidden.

Philippe Claudel is the author of many novels, among them By a Slow River, which was awarded the Prix Renaudot and the Elle Readers' Literary prize, Brodeck, which won the Prix Goncourt des Lyceens, and La Petite Fille de Monsieur Linh. Each of these novels have been translated into more than thirty languages. Claudel also wrote and directed the film I've Loved You So Long starring Kristin Scott Thomas and Elsa Zylberstein, which opened in movie theaters in the United States in the fall of 2008 and in thirty other countries around the world.