Sunday, January 6, 2013

Brodeck's Report - Philippe Claudel


      Brodeck's Report

A haunting story about a young Jew in a tiny village, who survives a concentration camp. When he returns to his village, he finds everything the same yet changed forever ........ He is a survivor from the first world war and owes his entire life to the old woman who rescues him from the burnt shell of his village. His new village accepts him but at the first sign of invasion gives him up as an outsider.......like the Lepidoptera butterflies.

The choices that human beings make when confronted by life or death situations and the atrocities inflicted by ordinary 'normal' people - without provocation - on friends and neighbours - if they are Jews, is so brilliantly and lucidly described. 

The survivors' journey back to his village from the concentration camp is a healing process for the reader also........ It however doesn't prepare you for the excesses of the retreating German army on the village....and it's consequences for our hero..... Not a single sight, sound, smell, feel of what the concentration camp was for the Jews, is left unsaid........a very graphic story which excels Ely Wiesel's 'Night'......