Postcards

At the beginning of the millennium, the author's mother, Lélia, receives a postcard with a picture of the Paris Opera Garnier, on which the names of four members of her family who perished in Auschwitz are written without further explanation. Years later, Léli's daughter Anne remembers the postcard and decides to track down the writer. With her mother's help, she reconstructs the history of the Rabinovitch family, originally from Moscow, who scattered around the world after World War I in the face of growing anti-Semitism and political persecution.

 At that time, Lelia's grandparents, as a young married couple, headed first to Latvia, then to Palestine, before landing with their three children in their dream country of France. However, they fail to obtain French citizenship and, after initial successes, face the horrors of deportation to the concentration camps and eventually to Auschwitz. Only the first-born daughter Myriam is saved, who escapes from Paris to the unoccupied south of France, ruled by a Vichy government, and joins the resistance with her husband.

 Among the documented fragments of the past, the author inserts memories from her own childhood and experiences from the present, touching on Jewish identity. The novel is a thrilling read and introduces the Czech reader to the lesser-known history of the French internment camps during World War II, but also to the current mood of French society. It was a great international success and was nominated for several literary awards. In 2022, he won the Choix Goncourt United States Student Award, and a year earlier, Anne Berest was shortlisted for the prestigious Prix Goncourt in France.