Vanessa Springora will publish her second book in January, entitled Surnamealso of autobiographical inspiration, five years later ConsentGrasset editions announced on Tuesday.
This new story, to be published on January 2, recounts an investigation into the man whose assumed name she bears, her Czech paternal grandfather, and questions the relationship with her father.
Consent was one of the editorial events of recent years, exposing the author’s relationship, when she was 14 in the mid-1980s, with the writer Gabriel Matzneff, who was almost 50.
In this story, the author’s father, separated from his mother, was described as largely absent.
Patrick Springora died six days after the release of this story, without having seen his daughter in the last ten years of his life.
This new book was born from the discovery, on the occasion of this death, of two photos of this grandfather dressed in a Nazi uniform. Was he conscripted by force as family legend has it? Where did he commit? And what is his true identity?
“This is the beginning of an obsessive hunt to understand who this grandfather whose assumed name she bears was, what his true identity was, and in what way he could, or not, “consent”, or even actively collaborate with barbarism,” explained Grasset in his presentation of the work sent to the press.
Vanessa Springora, 52, led a career as an editor at Julliard, a house which she managed from 2019 to 2021, and for which she remained an advisor.
