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    The Collaborator: The Trial and Execution of Robert Brasillach
    The Collaborator: The Trial and Execution of Robert Brasillach
    The Collaborator: The Trial and Execution of Robert Brasillach
    Ebook525 pages8 hours

    The Collaborator: The Trial and Execution of Robert Brasillach

    By Alice Kaplan

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    About this ebook

    On February 6, 1945, Robert Brasillach was executed for treason by a French firing squad. He was a writer of some distinction—a prolific novelist and a keen literary critic. He was also a dedicated anti-Semite, an acerbic opponent of French democracy, and editor in chief of the fascist weekly Je Suis Partout, in whose pages he regularly printed wartime denunciations of Jews and resistance activists.

    Was Brasillach in fact guilty of treason? Was he condemned for his denunciations of the resistance, or singled out as a suspected homosexual? Was it right that he was executed when others, who were directly responsible for the murder of thousands, were set free? Kaplan's meticulous reconstruction of Brasillach's life and trial skirts none of these ethical subtleties: a detective story, a cautionary tale, and a meditation on the disturbing workings of justice and memory, The Collaborator will stand as the definitive account of Brasillach's crime and punishment.

    A National Book Award Finalist

    A National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist

    "A well-researched and vivid account."—John Weightman, New York Review of Books

    "A gripping reconstruction of [Brasillach's] trial."—The New Yorker

    "Readers of this disturbing book will want to find moral touchstones of their own. They're going to need them. This is one of the few works on Nazism that forces us to experience how complex the situation really was, and answers won't come easily."—Daniel Blue, San Francisco Chronicle Book Review

    "The Collaborator is one of the best-written, most absorbing pieces of literary history in years."—David A. Bell, New York Times Book Review

    "Alice Kaplan's clear-headed study of the case of Robert Brasillach in France has a good deal of current-day relevance. . . . Kaplan's fine book . . . shows that the passage of time illuminates different understandings, and she leaves it to us to reflect on which understanding is better."—Richard Bernstein, The New York Times
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherUniversity of Chicago Press
    Release dateNov 20, 2014
    ISBN9780226308746
    The Collaborator: The Trial and Execution of Robert Brasillach
    Author

    Alice Kaplan

    Alice Kaplan is professor of romance languages and literature at Duke University. She is a finalist for the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award, and a recipient of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. Kaplan splits her time between North Carolina and Paris, France.

    Read more from Alice Kaplan

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    • 3/5
      More of a polemic than a biography. I had never heard of Brasilach but I have been very interested in the history of Vichy and the occupation, so if looked worth a read. The first and last chapters are very opinionated but the middle sections are more historical. The sections on the trial and aftermath are more detailed than I wanted but I got through them. In my opinion this is a book to skim but I wouldn't want to read it again.
    • 4/5
      This is an important if uncomfortable book. What is the progressive response to free speech in collaborative terms of Occupation? Should Celine have been shot? These are whimsical questions in lieu of a concerted response. I think the procedural response to the Brasillach affair deserves attention.
    • 5/5
      Dr. Kaplan writes an excellent history of a complex tale: a Fascist, anti-Semite writer who helped the Nazi occupiers of France achieve their goals through his writing. Mr. Brasillach comes across as someone who was abused at some point in his life, and so lashes out in the most extreme manner against those he dislikes, in a manner of someone who is very afraid. During the Occupation, he called for the death of Jews and communists en masse. After the restoration of the French Republic, he was tried for treason, convicted, and shot. The question remaining is: can someone's writing actually be construed as treason? It is a question for today, since there are many Robert Brasillach's on the extreme right wing in the USA whose writings are equally inflammatory. One difference is perhaps that Brasillach's writings were in the service of the Nazis, hated occupiers of France, while the USA has no occupiers. One could conceivably make the case, however, that the current Brasillachs help Russia undermine American democracy and its alliances, and so are as treasonous as Mr. Brasillach. Dr. Kaplan concludes the book with an explanation of how Mr. Brasillach's brother-in-law conceived the concept of Holocaust denialism, and how Mr. Brasillach has become a martyr and icon for France's current extreme right-wing party, the National Front.

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    The Collaborator - Alice Kaplan

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