Autopsy of a Father
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- $16.99
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- $16.99
Publisher Description
“[Kramer’s body of work is] precise and sumptuous . . . a song of emotion, but with a great lucidity about the humanity of simple people.” —Swiss Federal Office of Culture, Swiss Grand Prize for Literature citation
“You need to read Pascale Kramer’s books because they take you on a journey. You board a small ship that enters the human body, and what you felt while reading follows you for days after you’ve closed the book.” —Elle (France)
“Restrained, chiseled, implacable, the novels of Pascale Kramer perfectly master the art of creating a diffuse discomfort. Poignant.” —Marie Claire (Switzerland)
When a young woman returns to her childhood home after her estranged father’s death, she begins to piece together the final years of his life. What changed him from a prominent left-wing journalist to a bitter racist who defended the murder of a defenseless African immigrant? Kramer exposes a country gripped by intolerance and violence to unearth the source of a family’s fall from grace.
Set in Paris and its suburbs, and inspired by the real-life scandal of a French author and intellectual, Autopsy of a Father blends sharp observations about familial dynamics with resonant political and philosophical questions, taking a scalpel to the racism and anti-immigrant sentiment spreading just beneath the skin of modern society.
Pascale Kramer, recipient of the 2017 Swiss Grand Prize for Literature, is the author of fourteen books, including three novels published in English: The Living, The Child, and Autopsy of a Father, which was named a finalist for the La Closerie des Lilas, Ouest-France, and Orange du Livre prizes. Born in Geneva, she has worked in Los Angeles, and now lives in Paris, where she directs a documentary film festival about children’s rights.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Kramer's restrained, powerful novel is about the complicated pull of family ties. Ania, a woman living on her own with her young son, Theo, learns that her father, Gabriel, a radio commentator and intellectual, has died. Estranged from him since the death of her mother, she visits his country estate to settle his affairs and learn more about the father she never knew. His womanizing behaviors and condescending attitude toward Ania created a rift between them, as did her feeling that she could never match him intellectually. Ania discovers that Gabriel had made a number of increasingly controversial pronouncements, the most recent, and most disturbing, of which was a defense of two local young men who attacked and killed an immigrant vagrant. The novel captures the complexity of relationships with great subtlety, not only Ania's with her father, but also with Theo's father, Novak, an Eastern European immigrant who has just reentered Ania's life, as well as with Gabriel's widow, Clara, who is equally helpful and difficult. While the ending is overly dramatic, for the most part the novel is a series of quiet scenes, full of introspection, memories, and contradictory emotions. Bononno has translated the original French into striking, flowing prose.
