Brodeck: A novel [Deckle Edge] [Hardcover]

Philippe Claudel (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 23, 2009

Forced into a brutal concentration camp during a great war, Brodeck returns to his village at the war’s end and takes up his old job of writing reports for a governmental bureau. One day a stranger comes to live in the village. His odd manner and habits arouse suspicions: His speech is formal, he takes long, solitary walks, and although he is unfailingly friendly and polite, he reveals nothing about himself. When the stranger produces drawings of the village and its inhabitants that are both unflattering and insightful, the villagers murder him. The authorities who witnessed the killing tell Brodeck to write a report that is essentially a whitewash of the incident.
As Brodeck writes the official account, he sets down his version of the truth in a separate, parallel narrative. In measured, evocative prose, he weaves into the story of the stranger his own painful history and the dark secrets the villagers have fiercely kept hidden.
Set in an unnamed time and place, Brodeck blends the familiar and unfamiliar, myth and history into a work of extraordinary power and resonance. Readers of J. M. Coetzee’s Disgrace, Bernhard Schlink’s The Reade,r and Kafka will be captivated by Brodeck.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. Coming across as the love child of Bela Tarr's film Werckmeister Harmóniák and Gabriel García Márquez's A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings, this disconcerting and darkly atmospheric novel, set in an unnamed European town secluded high in the mountains, deals with the effects of collective guilt by examining the dark secrets of its residents as they recall the hardships of war and occupation. Following the end of an unspecified war that sounds very much like WWII, protagonist Brodeck, who survived the camps by literally becoming a guard's pet (Brodeck the Dog), is reunited with his wife and daughter. After the murder of a mystical drifter, Brodeck is made to write a narrative of the events for the authorities absolving the village's inhabitants of any blame. Though there are no innocents, by the end some characters make tentative footsteps toward reclaiming their humanity. Claudel's style is very visual and evocative (he also wrote and directed the film I've Loved You So Long), and this novel, like the brothers Grimm fables, is full of terror, horror, and beauty and wonder. (June)
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Review

Winner of the 2010 Independent Foreign Fiction Prize!

"Although Claudel had long been respected as a novelist in France, only two of his previous books, By a Slow River and Grey Souls, had been translated into English. Now his latest novel, Brodeck, arrives like a fresh, why-haven't-we-known-him discovery, revealing him to be as dazzling on the page as he is on the screen.... Brodeck is the Brothers Grimm by way of Kafka.... [Claudel] audaciously approaches a subject that seems thoroughly covered and makes it fresh. His nightmarish fairy tale captures the essential, inescapable evil at the center of the Holocaust, the human urge to destroy Others ... a compulsion existing beyond time, place or politics."
—The New York Times Book Review

"Coming across as the love child of Bela Tarr's film Werckmeister Harmóniák and Gabriel García Márquez's 'A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings,' this disconcerting and darkly atmospheric novel, set in an unnamed European town secluded high in the mountains, deals with the effects of collective guilt by examining the dark secrets of its residents as they recall the hardships of war and occupation. Following the end of an unspecified war that sounds very much like WWII, protagonist Brodeck, who survived the camps by literally becoming a guard's pet (Brodeck the Dog), is reunited with his wife and daughter. After the murder of a mystical drifter, Brodeck is made to write a narrative of the events for the authorities absolving the village's inhabitants of any blame. Though there are no innocents, by the end some characters make tentative footsteps toward reclaiming their humanity. Claudel's style is very visual and evocative (he also wrote and directed the film I've Loved You So Long), and this novel, like the brothers Grimm fables, is full of terror, horror, and beauty and wonder."
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“A beautiful, sinister and haunting fable of persecution, resistance and survival. It is set in the aftermath of genocidal war in a vividly etched rural landscape that has all the spine-tingling intensity of a waking dream. . . . Claudel prevailed with his hallucinatory story—almost a dark fairy-tale in which Kafka meets the Grimms—of an uneasy homecoming after wrenching tragedy. . . . Written with a lyrical but solemn grace to which John Cullen's English does rich justice, this book both is, and is not, a novel about the moral wastelands left behind by the Holocaust and other modern killing-fields.” 
—The Independent
 
"Deeply wise and classically beautiful…. Brodeck won the Prix Goncourt des Lycéens in the original French and John Cullen's English translation is as clear as a mountain stream. It is a modern masterpiece."
—The Daily Telegraph
 
 "This is a remarkable novel, all the more so because this account of man's inhumanity to man, of coarse and brutal stupidity, of fear and surrender to evil, is nevertheless not without hope. Brodeck survives because, despite all he has experienced, he remains capable of love. It is also beautifully written, and well translated… I mentioned Kafka earlier, and the novel is as compelling as anything he wrote. In France it won the Prix Goncourt des Lycéens. The reviewer in Le Monde called it, simply, magnificent. And so it is."
—The Scotsman
"[O]riginal, brilliant and disturbing… It is a relentless, uncomfortable book that achieves a beauty of its own through Claudel's deft writing and passionate commitment to truth. Claudel is a novelist of ideas, in the French tradition. He deals skillfully in archetypes and abstractions. His characters and their village are sparsely sketched, just like the De Anderer portraits and landscapes that cause such fatal offence.
“Clauel's film] I've Loved You So Long was certainly an upsetting film, but it was also life-affirming and celebratory. The same, ultimately, can be said of Brodeck but, in this case, the journey towards affirmation is as bleak and dark as can be, a journey that goes to the heart of what it means to be human, responsible and committed to the truth. A journey towards what it means to live a life that is something rather than nothing at all.”
—The Times
 
"In John Cullen's deft translation, Claudel's writing is lucid and passionate…. [An] excellent novel."
—The Guardian
 
"….a grave, powerful, unforgettable book."
—Livres Hebdo
 
"In a finely-wrought style…Philippe Claudel describes a terrible world where crime is a natural function of the living."
—Le Magazine-Littéraire
 
"Philippe Claudel is at the peak of his art as a storyteller and portrait-painter."
—Elle (France)
 "Don't expect to get out of this powerful, disturbing novel unscathed….Long after you close the book, you'll remember its words, which always sound like terribly accurate reflections of our doubts as well as our fears."
—Lire
 
"In Brodeck, Philippe Claudel delves deep into his obsession with the theme of hatred for the other and with the evil perpetrated in the name of that hatred. His writing, free from any trace of pathos, is astonishingly virtuosic and beautiful, and his humanist stance is all the stronger for it. Unforgettable."
—L'Express
 
"….a meditation upon the hatred of the foreigner, the rejection of difference, the blindness of crowds, group stupidity, collective cowardice. Once again, Philippe Claudel plumbs the black depths of the human heart, with contained fury and deliberate humility….In the end, this is simply very great literature."
—Le Parisien

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 336 pages
• Publisher: Nan A. Talese (June 23, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0385527241
• ISBN-13: 978-0385527248
• Product Dimensions: 5.9 x 1.1 x 8.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (16 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #572,841 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

21 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Dark, July 19, 2009

By 

Biblibio - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Brodeck: A novel (Hardcover)

In giving Philippe Claudel a second chance (after leaving "By a Slow River" not wholly impressed), I hoped Claudel would learn from the failures of that previous book and find a tighter storyline and a clearer purpose. While Claudel maintained his beautifully written style and often a sense of distance from the story itself, "Brodeck" ends up as the best of both worlds, a beautifully interesting story that does more than just amble along.

Be warned: "Brodeck" is not a fast paced book. It has no intention of racing through pages at a breath-taking speed. Instead, narrator Brodeck calmly tries to arrange his thoughts on paper, essentially leading to three stories. In one, Brodeck tells about life before the unnamed war (easily the second world war), in another, he tells of his war experiences (clearly the camps) and in the third he tells of the "Anderer", the "other", a man who suddenly and strangely appeared in Brodeck's town after the war. These three stories develop side-by-side in a rather non-linear fashion: hints in regards to each are dropped along the way but they're not meant to surprise, necessarily. The story simply grows and becomes clearer as Brodeck tells his tale.

This is not much of a Holocaust tale, even as the remarkable unnamed parallels become clear. The story focuses less on the horror of the war and more on consequences. It shrinks a giant story and presents one man, one town, one situation. The story does not ever feel tired or old; rather, its anonymity gives it new light. While aspects of the setting seem set in stone, each reader leaves the book with their own impressions regarding certain aspects, with their own interpretations and their own crystal clear image of the story.

It helps that "Brodeck" is beautifully written. Claudel sticks to the flowing elegance of "By a Slow River" but gives it a slight nudge, leading to a story that actually moves along. Each chapter adds and leads into the next, even as the stories shift and change. It's difficult to set this book aside for long without wanting to understand more about these perfectly drawn characters. Brodeck may be the main character, but he is far from the only one: Claudel manages to create an entire diverse town, full to the brim with whole characters. Whether it's a strange eccentric man, the town priest, the mayor or a whole range of human characters, each man woman and child feels real and speaks truly. Even as Claudel (through Brodeck) prefers to highlight the bad, sparks of humanity and good still emerge on occasion, despite the dark undertones to the story.

"Brodeck" is an excellent book that will stick with readers for a long time to come. It is a dark story, representing (for the most part) the dim parts of human nature, traveling deep into gray/black murky waters. It is not meant to be a quick cheerful tale, but "Brodeck" is powerful, fascinating and wonderfully written. It'll be hard to leave "Brodeck" without feeling slightly changed or at least feeling more aware of certain things. Whether the characters draw you in, the plot appeals to you, or Claudel's clear, elegant prose attracts you, "Brodeck" is worth the time.

Highly recommended.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A haunting masterpiece, February 12, 2010

By 

Ralph Blumenau (London United Kingdom) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Brodeck: A novel (Hardcover)

It is after the Second World War, but Claudel's descriptions often call to mind a more ancient world of monumental, gnarled villagers; and the way he writes about scenery evokes now some illuminated manuscript, now paintings by Brueghel. The village is not named, but we are obviously in Alsace: the villagers have German names, and they use words in a twisted (invented?) German dialect.

Brodeck is one of them, but, unlike the others, he is far from monumental. He is timid and quivers with anxiety after his appalling experiences in a concentration camp from which he had recently returned. (There are hints, never made explicit, that he was of Jewish origin.) He has an insignificant job reporting to the local administration on the state of the local paths and streams, fauna and flora.

The villagers have murdered a man who had come to the village from Outside and whom from the beginning they had called the `Anderer' [sic - the Other], and later, more ominously, the `Fremder' [Foreigner]. Brodeck had not been present at the murder, but because he is a reporter, the villagers force him to write a report for the mayor of the village to pass on to the authorities. He had not been present because he was himself something of an Outsider, having been brought to the village as an orphan child soon after the First World War, and then having returned to it from the camp when those who had denounced him to the Germans had presumed him dead. (Just how much of an Outsider or `Fremder' he has always been considered emerges later.) It is clear from the start that the task he has been given is dangerous: for before he can carry it out, he has to question himself and others about the circumstances which had led to the murder.

He zigzags back and forth between shards of memory. Many of course concern the enigmatic Anderer who had been seen sketching or writing things into his notebooks, but who hardly ever spoke. The tension that builds up around him grips not only the villagers, but the reader also.

Other memories recall Brodeck's horrifying past experiences: the inhumanity of men in the mass, a murderous city riot, life and death in the camps. We learn how the villagers had behaved under the occupation of the Germans, who are referred to throughout as `Fratergekeime' [brother brood? because they spoke the same language?]: the betrayals of frightened collaborators, willing collaborators, penitent collaborators. None of them can now bear to see the truths about themselves.

Brodeck recalls oppressive heat and freezing cold (the weather often plays the part of a chorus), smells of cooking, of smoke, of farm animals, of ordure, of decaying corpses and of perfumes. There is his love - its pathos becomes clearer as the story progresses - for his wife, his young daughter, and for the wise old woman who has looked after him as nurse and housekeeper ever since she had brought him as an orphan to the village.

There are some near-surrealistic incidents, and passages rich in similes and symbolism. A haunting work of art.

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Breathtaking, August 23, 2009

By 

Sandy "reader" (Mesa, AZ USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Brodeck: A novel (Hardcover)

I'm sorry I've finished reading it; I didn't want it to end. But I couldn't stop reading. Brodeck is the story of a man, his village, and a visitor. And the story is three tales in one.

The biggest story is the backdrop of history, of camps in a nation that has undergone cleansing. We can't be certain the character is talking about Nazi Germany, but we can be fairly comfortable with that analogy.

Or...perhaps the biggest story is that of the visitor, the traveler, and an event that occurs in this village, already scarred by fear, suspicion, and a decided lack of kindness.

Or...maybe the biggest story is about the report that our protagonist Brodeck must write, is asked to write, to explain the situation with the visitor. And in collecting interviews, we learn about the villagers, their dark hearts, and their consciences which ought to be guilty. Crowd psychology, what fear will make people do.

I'm taken by the non-linear presentation, yet it flowed like silk. The natural environment, the Valley, the secrets and suspicions. The things I read that I still question - particularly the reality of some things.

I won't forget this book. Nor his name.