Surname (French Edition) By Vanessa Springora

📚 A Quest for Truth at the Crossroads of the Intimate and History

With Patronyme, Vanessa Springora returns in a text that is both literary, intimate, and political, addressing the dark areas of her paternal lineage. On the eve of a media appearance to discuss Le Consentement, the author is brought back to reality by a police summons: her father is found dead, alone, in a suburban apartment.

This shock marks the starting point of a personal investigation that will lead her to uncover the troubled past of her paternal grandfather: a man whose identity seems to have been carefully rewritten. Two youth photos adorned with Nazi insignias challenge the official family version of a young Czech forcibly enlisted, who later became a resistant and political refugee.

🧩 A Memorial Puzzle between Moravia, Archives, and Literature

Drawing on family documents, German, French, and Czech archives, as well as testimonies gathered in Moravia, Vanessa Springora reconstructs an uncertain itinerary, where doubt persists.
She questions:
✔️ The weight of the name and the identity passed down
✔️ Collaboration, consent, or coercion in the face of history
✔️ The work of memory in a Europe fractured by totalitarianism

✍️ A Hybrid Text, Both Narrative, Analysis, and Literary Meditation

Alternating fiction, autobiography, travel narrative, historical investigation, and literary reflections, Patronyme becomes a narrative kaleidoscope, influenced by figures like Kafka, Gombrowicz, Zweig, or Kundera.

Springora questions:
✅ The novel of origins and forged identities
✅ Family silences, sometimes more violent than the facts
✅ The destructive power of what is left unsaid
✅ The resurgence of ghosts from the past, in a Europe that is still threatened

🧠 A powerful book on memory, lineage, and the legacy of violence

Through this quest for meaning, Vanessa Springora is not only seeking to understand her ancestors: she sheds light on her own story, her relationship with her father, and the role of writing in breaking the invisible chains of the past.

📖 Book Features:

• Title: Patronyme
• Author: Vanessa Springora
• Publisher: Grasset
• Collection: French Literature
• Publication Date: January 2, 2025
• Format: Paperback
• Number of Pages: 368
• ISBN: 978-2-246-84035-0
• EAN13: 9782246840350
• Dimensions: 20.5 x 14 x 2.5 cm
• Weight: 375 g
• Language: French