Pohlednice – Berest Anne (2026)

At the beginning of the millennium, the author’s mother, Lélia, receives a postcard depicting the Palais Garnier in Paris. Without any explanation, it bears the birth names of four members of her family who died in Auschwitz. Years later, Lélia’s daughter Anne remembers the postcard and decides to find out who sent it. With her mother’s help, she reconstructs the history of the Rabinovitch family, originally from Moscow, whose members scattered around the world after the First World War to escape growing antisemitism and political persecution. Lélia’s grandparents, then a young married couple, first went to Latvia, then Palestine, before finally settling with their three children in their dreamed-of France. They fail to obtain French citizenship, however, and after initial success face the horrors of deportation to internment camps and eventually Auschwitz. Only their firstborn daughter Myriam survives; she flees Paris for unoccupied southern France, ruled by the Vichy government, where she and her husband join the resistance. The author interweaves documented fragments of the past with memories from her own childhood and experiences from the present, touching on Jewish identity. This compelling novel introduces readers to the lesser-known history of French internment camps during the Second World War as well as current moods in French society. It achieved major international success and was nominated for several literary awards. In 2022, it won the Choix Goncourt United States student prize, and the previous year Anne Berest was shortlisted for France’s prestigious Prix Goncourt.