ABSTRACT
Cécile Wajsbrot’s novels often evoke the past, indeed the Occupation and the Shoah, but their true subject is the here and now. Born in 1954, she turns time and again to World War II (which had tragic consequences for her family), but her deepest goal is not to retell history; and she only secondarily commemorates loss or bears witness to abjectness, though she performs these tasks admirably. Above all, she scrutinizes how individuals can remain burdened by historical events, even if they did not—as she did not—personally experience them. The author of the tellingly entitled Mémorial (2005) brings unusual narrative techniques to bear on the dilemma of coming to terms with one’s own life in a present still marked by the Shoah (and Hiroshima, as she has added). This concern with History and personal history is accompanied by an urgent question: how might we remain fully aware of yet liberate ourselves from the past, and then move confidently forward into the future?
