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The collaborator : the trial & execution of Robert Brasillach / Alice Kaplan.
Connect to full text Available online
View online- Format:
- Book
- Author/Creator:
- Kaplan, Alice Yaeger.
- Language:
- English
- Subjects (All):
- Brasillach, Robert, 1909-1945--Political and social views.
- Brasillach, Robert.
- Brasillach, Robert, 1909-1945.
- World War, 1939-1945--Collaborationists--France.
- World War, 1939-1945.
- Fascism and literature--France--History--20th century.
- Fascism and literature.
- Intellectuals--Political activity--France.
- Intellectuals.
- Intellectuals--Political activity.
- Trials (Treason).
- History.
- Political and social views.
- France.
- Authors, French--20th century--Biography.
- Authors, French.
- France--Intellectual life--20th century.
- Intellectual life.
- Trials (Treason)--France.
- Fascism--France.
- Fascism.
- Genre:
- Biographies.
- Physical Description:
- 1 online resource (xvi, 308 pages.)
- Place of Publication:
- Chicago : University of Chicago Press, 2000.
- System Details:
- text file
- Summary:
- On February 6, 1945, a thirty-five-year-old French writer and newspaper editor named Robert Brasillach was executed for treason by a French firing squad. He was the only writer of any distinction to be put to death by the French Liberation government during the violent days of score-settling known as the Purge. In this gripping book, Alice Kaplan, author of the acclaimed memoir French Lessons, tells the story of Brasillach's rise and fall: his emergence as the golden boy of literary fascism during the 1930s, his wartime collaboration with the Nazis, his dramatic trial, and his afterlife as a martyr for French rightists and Holocaust revisionists.
- A prolific novelist and critic, Brasillach was a witty, flamboyant product of France's prestigious Ecole Normale Superieure. He was also an anti-Semite, an acerbic opponent of French democracy, and the editor in chief of France's infamous fascist weekly, Je Suis Partout. His trial and execution, carefully reconstructed in The Collaborator, remain one of the most controversial episodes in the history of twentieth-century France. In the charged days of January 1945--with Paris liberated but France still at war--a monumental courtroom drama pitted a fierce government prosecutor against a florid defense lawyer for what each considered justice on both a personal and a national scale.
- Paris in 1945 is also the venue for Kaplan's ethical examination of the questions raised by Brasillach's trial. Was he 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? The verdict on these momentous issues was left to four jurors from the working-class suburbs of Paris, whose stories Kaplan presents here for the first time. In recreating the trial, she also uncovers more material never before published: damaging writings by Brasillach omitted from his Complete Works, and the file that Charles de Gaulle used to reach his decision not to pardon the writer.
- In its historical revelations, its beautifully wrought prose, and its rich ambiguities, The Collaborator is a superb example of what the present can offer to the understanding of the past. 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 Robert Brasillach's crime and punishment.
- Contents:
- 1. The making of a Fascist writer
- 2. Brasillach's war
- 3. The liberation of Paris
- 4. Jail
- 5. Marcel Reboul : the government prosecutor
- 6. Jacques Isorni : counsel for the defense
- 7. Missing persons : Brasillach's suburban jury
- 8. Court
- 9. The writers' petition
- 10. No pardon
- 11. Reactions
- 12. After the trial
- 13. Justice in hindsight
- 14. The Brasillach myth.
- Notes:
- Electronic reproduction. Ann Arbor, MI Available via World Wide Web.
- National Book Award finalist, nonfiction, 2000.
- Includes bibliographical references (pages 237-287) and index.
- Description based on print version record.
- ISBN:
- 9780226308746
- 022630874X
- Publisher Number:
- 99984098455
- Access Restriction:
- Restricted for use by site license.
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