This author adapted for cinema, who sold 75,000 copies in just three weeks of her first shocking book, is back with an equally intimate text

Five years ago, Vanessa Springora recounted in an autobiographical book the influence, from the age of 14, that the fifty-year-old writer and intellectual Gabriel Matzneff had on her. Several times awarded, this man, now 88 years old, had never hidden in his works that he was attracted to children and adolescents, nor of having had sexual relations with them. The shocking testimony of the author, aged 48 at the time of publication, had the effect of a bomb: three weeks after the release of Consent75,000 copies had already been sold. An equally chilling adaptation by Vanessa Filho, with Kim Higelin and Jean-Paul Rouve, also attracted crowds to theaters from October 2023, and in particular young audiences thanks to the popularity of TikTok for the film.

Also discover: How a TikTok trend transformed the destiny of the film “Consent”

“Surname” by Vanessa Springora begins with the death of her father Patrick

At the start of the winter season, the author continues to engage with the reader in Surnamestill published by Grasset, this time exploring the secrets of his paternal family with such a unique name. Springora, where does it come from? Always guided by the numerous explanations given by those close to her, and in particular her father Patrick, she never knew with certainty. Angry, fabulous, this man had never had a real relationship with his only daughter. But it is she who is contacted by the police, in 2020, when the latter dies. Heart sick and unemployed, he lived holed up in his mother’s apartment and suffered from Diogenes syndrome. And here is Vanessa Springora in the middle of sorting through this mess in the middle of which she discovers, stunned, photographs of her grandfather Joseph wearing the Nazi insignia.

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“Surname” of Vanessa Springora: following in the footsteps of her grandfather from Bohemia-Moravia

From Courbevoie, in the Paris suburbs, to the town of Zábřeh in the Sudetenland, the region where her paternal grandfather was from, the author traces the thread of her family history in a text that is as fascinating as it is revolting. Was Joseph part of the Gestapo and part of Kristallnacht? Or was he forcibly conscripted into Hitler’s German army and deserted, in Normandy, after meeting his future wife Huguette? Through these painful searches for Vanessa Springora, both around the origin of her family name and the truth about her grandfather’s ideology, there is also the need, for the injured child, to explain the madness of his now deceased father. It is also to him that she addresses, without mincing her words, at the beginning and at the end of Surname. While regularly reminding that “understanding” does not mean “forgiving”.