Five years after Consent, Vanessa Springora announces the release of her second book

Vanessa Springora will publish her second book in January, entitled Surnamealso of autobiographical inspiration, five years later Consent Grasset 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. The work 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?

« It’s the beginning of an obsessive hunt to understand who this grandfather whose assumed name she bears was., what was his true identity, and in what way he could, or not, “consent”, or even actively collaborate, in the barbarism », explained Grasset in his presentation of the work sent to the press.

Also read
Our review of the film Consent: Gabriel Matzneff for dummies

Consentreal success

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. His book 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.

Sold more than 300,000 copies since the end of 2019, Consent was adapted for cinema at the end of 2023. The film enjoyed unexpected success with the public, in particular thanks to the reactions of many young spectators on social networks such as TikTok or Instagram. The intimate scenes and the shocking message, that of a man’s control over a 14-year-old girl, particularly appealed to this generation, to the point of selling 300,000 admissions in just three weeks of screening.