After the shock wave caused by “Le Consentement”, Vanessa Springora will publish a new book called “Patronyme” on January 2, 2025.
This time the author investigates her family history, and in particular her paternal grandfather whose assumed name she bears.
Was the latter really forcibly recruited by the Nazis as the family legend tells?
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The Gabriel Matzneff affair, writer accused of child abuse
His first book had the effect of a bomb. Five years later Consent – in which she recounted how she had fallen at the age of 14 under the influence of the pedophile writer Gabriel Matzneff, then aged 50 – Vanessa Springora will publish her second book on January 2, entitled Surname.
This new story, also autobiographically inspired, recounts the author’s investigation into her Czech paternal grandfather, whose assumed name she bears. It was born from the discovery, on the occasion of his father’s death, of two photos of this grandfather dressed in a Nazi uniform. Was he conscripted by force as family legend has it? Or did he commit?
An investigation into the origins
“It 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 in barbarism”explain Grasset editions in the presentation of the book. (new window)
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“In this kaleidoscopic text, alternating fiction and analysis, travelogue, family legends, alternative versions and companionship with Kafka, Gombrowicz, Zweig and Kundera, Vanessa Springora questions the novel’s origins, the adventures of her family name and mythology male figures from his childhood, in an attempt to elucidate their thwarted destinies”completes the editor.
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