Ein Geheimnis
Subtitle: Roman
By: Philippe Grimbert ; aus dem Französischen von Holger Fock und Sabine Müller
Edition: 1. Aufl.
Publisher: Suhrkamp Verlag
Published: 2006
Place of publication: Frankfurt am Main
Language: ger
Translated from: fre
Number of pages: 154
ISBN-13: 9783518417508
Work titles: Secret
Description: The novel follows the Jewish family of Maxime & Tania Nathan during the years leading up to the 2nd world war, the Nazi occupation, and the post-war years where the 2nd born son Philippe learns of his parents tragic past in during WW2 France. -- A 2007 film was directed and written by Claude Miller. The screenplay was based on this 2004 novel. -- Psychoanalyst Philippe Grimbert, b. 1948, "has to re-imagine almost all of [the story] -- he wasn't there, and neither was his main source, [an old family friend] Louise ... As if his parents' story wasn't enough, there's more, a coda of sorts --^

though Grimbert can barely go there. There's a second family tragedy, one that a grown Grimbert is much closer to, but he can't do much more than describe what happens in a brief paragraph, wondering what the last words his father had murmured into his mother's ears were, unable to bring himself to consider much more surrounding that act [of committing suicide]. ... Grimbert ... is perilously close to presenting a well-rounded course of psychotherapeutic sessions, brought to their conclusion, getting it all into the open, going through it, putting the pieces in place ... 'Un Secret' is a well-presented, deeply unsettling, and fascinating story."--(http://www.complete-review.com/reviews/modfr/grimbert.htm). --^

"Twenty years after his mother and father jumped to their deaths from a balcony, Philippe Grimbert has written a gripping novel about the hidden memories that dominated their lives. / A colossal bestseller in Europe, [Un Secret]/Memory is the story of a family haunted by the secret of their past: an illicit love affair, a lost child, and a devastating betrayal dating back to the Second World War. / "The day after my fifteenth birthday, I finally learned what I had always known ..." / Growing up in postwar Paris as the sickly only child of glamorous athletic parents, the narrator invents for himself a make-believe older brother, stronger and more brilliant than he can ever be.^

It is only when the boy begins talking to an old family friend that he comes to realize that his imaginary sibling had a real predecessor: a half brother whose death in the concentration camps is part of a buried family secret that he was intended never to uncover."--(http://www.readinggroupguides.com/guides_M/memory1.asp). -- "At 15, a violent altercation with a schoolroom bully over a lesson on Holocaust victims results in the revelation of his origins: Grimbert, the narrator?s family?s name, was once Grinberg, and the story of his parents? romantic retreat to the country during the war is shattered by a heartbreaking story of betrayal and sacrifice in occupied France. For Grimbert, the aftermath of WWII forced survivors into prisons of their own memories and denial, bound together by an impossible grief." - (Editorial Review, Publishers Weekly vol. 254 iss. 45, p. 35 (c) 11/12/2007).
Notes: Autobiographical novel.