"In her debut novel, a historian of Vichy France tackles her family's real-life collaboration during the Second World War . . . The result is at once a ghost story, a tale of amour fou, a settling of accounts, and, one senses, a deeply personal act of expiation . . . allowing readers to identify with the human foibles of characters on the wrong side of history, while never excusing them."-The New Yorker
"Céeacute;cile Desprairies's novel, The Propagandist, is full of so many secrets that it's a wonder she managed to write it all . . . The book takes an insider's perspective on occupied France's collaboration with Nazi Germany during World War II."–The New York Times
"Longlisted, with good reason, for the 2023 Prix Goncourt–France's most prestigious literary prize–and now beautifully translated into English by Natasha Lehrer, The Propagandist is a harrowing but elegantly constructed rot-addled family romance."–The Financial Times
"This haunting autobiographical novel shows that the Nazi occupation of France is not an event in the distant past but part of family histories and memories that still go unspoken. Cécile Desprairies has written a brave and timely book."–Ruth Ben-Ghiat, author of Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present
"The Propagandist shows why historical fiction matters, how stories breathe life into forgotten moments. Through the lens of one family, Desprairies' narrator, a child, reveals her mother's collaborationist past under the Nazi occupation of France. This haunting tale stayed with me."–Cara Black, author of Three Hours in Paris
"This clever and vivid book by a historian of Vichy France falls somewhere between autobiographical novel and fictionalised memoir . . . The narrator learns that her family were 'Nazi sympathizers, ' though the phrase hardly captures the zeal . . . The details are shocking."–The Guardian
"A vividly detailed story interwoven with scorching truth, sensitively translated by Natasha Lehrer. It is a personal J'Accuse, indicting her mother and the family–a community of enthusiastic collaborators–for their part in the collapse of a country."–The Spectator
"The Propagandist is a fist-in-your-face cautionary tale. A thinly veiled fictional autobiography, it covers the genesis, blossoming, demise, and aftermath of one of France's most painful episodes: namely, French collaboration during World War II . . . The smooth translation does justice to a Greek drama of emotional entrapment and release."–World Literature Today
"Above all a love story: a blazing and uneasy romance with fascism . . . an eerie reminder of how deeply entrenched fascism remains in Europe. In recent decades, with the rise of far-right parties across the continent–and notably in Germany–this political tide has felt like quaint regression, doubling back on old and tired history, a defeated cause. But The Propagandist suggests that Nazism has never really faded."–Lux Magazine
"The Propagandist is a tale of Vichy and a return of the French repressed that hits shelves just as the old demons stretch their limbs. A work of sly genre, it slips between fact and fiction to try to capture the truth of French collaboration with the Third Reich . . . an autobiographical story unafraid of the darkness under the City of Light."–The New York Sun
"For this spellbinding debut novel, hist
