ABSTRACT
Any reference to the subject matter of this book, whether in France or the UK, has almost invariably provoked mention of one name: that of Charlotte Delbo. In spite, or perhaps because, of her atypical status Delbo appears to have become emblematic of the French female deportee writer in the public imagination. Alongside this popular conception is an established body of critical work: of all the writers in the corpus, Delbo alone has won significant attention from the academy.1 However, while her texts have elicited a number of different critical approaches, no one has sought to contextualise her writings visà-vis a broad corpus of French female deportee accounts and to consider why she alone has achieved canonical status. Although a comprehensive study of Delbo’s position relative to the corpus falls outwith the remit of this book, by way of conclusion I would like to outline some of the factors which differentiate her accounts from those of the rest of the corpus, basing my analysis on issues raised in each of the preceding chapters. The following discussion focuses primarily on the bestknown of Delbo’s deportation texts, the ‘Auschwitz et après’ trilogy, comprising Aucun de nous ne reviendra, Une connaissance inutile and Mesure de nos jours.2
