The postcard of the title is received in 2003 at Berest’s mother’s Paris home in 2003, and includes only the names of Berest’s maternal great-grandparents, Ephraïm and Emma, and their two younger children, Noémie and Jacques. Anne mother, Lélia, who seems to save everything, puts the postcard away in a drawer. Many years later, an antisemitic incident spurs Berest’s memory of the postcard and a compulsion to solve the mystery of who sent it and why.

The book plays out in two storylines. One is the story of Berest’s quest, which includes long talks with her mother and research through the many archival boxes her mother has collected about the family history, consultation with a private detective and graphologist, and visits to the places where Berest’s maternal ancestors lived.

The other storyline is a fictionalized family history. Berest’s family members listed on the postcard existed, they were murdered in the Nazi death camps 60 years before the postcard was received, while Berest’s grandmother, Myriam, who was the eldest child of Ephraîm and Emma Rabinovitch, was able to escape the net of the Nazis’ collaborators in the occupied zone and survive the war in the so-called free zone in the south of France. Berest is able to fill in many other life events from family lore, the materials in her mother’s archives, and what she is told by people who knew or knew of her great-grandparents and their children. The book is classified as fiction because Berest then clothes the bones of this true Rabinovitch family history with thoughts, emotions, and actions of her ancestors.

I imagine that most people reading this book are familiar with the Holocaust and its six million murdered European Jews. They’ve seen the horrific black-and-white pictures and videos of starving prisoners found in the liberated death camps, and the stacks of skeletal corpses. As awful as those sights are, they can be distancing and dehumanizing. Berest brings vividly to life how 20th-century European antisemitism drove her ancestors to move constantly throughout Europe, seeking safety and a normal life. Moscow, Lodz, Riga, Palestine, Prague, and France are just some of the places of her family’s diaspora. But no place was safe. Even before the Holocaust, antisemitic hostility drove her ancestors away from their homes to try and start over again in another place. Her great-grandfather, Ephraïm, who was completely secularized, was convinced he’d found that place in France, where he moved his wife and three children when his older daughter, Myriam, was just 10 years old. French became Myrian’s sixth language, and she and her sister Noémie excelled at it and all their academic subjects. Yet they were always treated as being separate, never really French. And when France fell to the Germans, they saw how quick the French, especially the police and civil authorities, were to collaborate and do the Nazis’ dirty work.

Given the shocking rise in antisemitism around the world and in France and the US today, it’s easy to understand the anguish of the Rabinovitch family to discover that no matter how hard they worked, no matter their dedication to their adopted country, they would always be viewed with hostility by a significant segment of the population. And all these years after the horrors of the Holocaust, Anne and Lélia discuss their personal experiences of antisemitism and how Anne’s young daughter, Claire, has already experienced antisemitism at her school. With a new boyfriend, the divorced Anne attends her first seder, and all the talk is about the rise of right-wing antisemitism in France, and how concerned they should be about the increasingly overt antisemitism in their country and how much it may affect them.

This book is phenomenal, truly exceptional. I’ve read so many books, fiction and non-fiction, about the Holocaust and antisemitism, and few have had the emotional power and feeling of enlightenment that this one has. Berest deserves all the awards she has already won for the book, and more.

Powerful and engaging, realistically written as a novel and autobiographical. The writing and storytelling are so excellent that I wondered which parts were true and which were imagined. Highly recommended for readers who love historical or literary nonfiction and fiction. Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC.

I kind of wish that everyone had a writer in the family who could do for their history what Anne Berest is able to do for her own in The Postcard, beautifully translated by Tina Kover. This book, which I can best describe as a blend of autofiction and historical fiction, is an attempt to fill in gaps and bring back to life relatives who were murdered in the Holocaust. Berest also seeks to understand how her grandmother, Myriam, survived; asks questions about what it means to be Jewish; and wrestles with continuing anti-Semitism. This book is extraordinary in its depth and sensitivity and vibrancy.

The catalyst for Berest’s exploration of her family’s history is the arrival of a mysterious postcard. The card contains the names of Berest’s maternal great-grandparents, great-aunt, and great-uncle. All four were murdered at Auschwitz. The card is addressed to M. Bouverais, which might refer to either her own grandmother or her step-grandfather. When it arrives, Berest begins to question her mother, Lélia, to learn what she knows about what happened to the Rabinovitch family before and during World War II—and how Myriam escaped their fate.

The amount of research that Léli was able to find is astonishing, considering the efforts made by the Nazis to cover up their crimes and of the French and Vichy governments to side-step their collaboration with the Nazis. In the second half of The Postcard, there are several heartbreaking moments when Myriam and Lélia run face-first into stonewalling by the French government. Myriam was constantly put off with white lies that her family would come back if she was just a little more patient. Years later, Lélia would have to deal with contradictory documentation on what happened to the four Rabinovitchs.

Berest takes her mother and grandmother’s research, blends it with wider research about the French Resistance, the history of French anti-Semitism, her memories, and her talents as a writer to create dialogue and scenes that help us imagine what it might be like to be hunted across France, to be persecuted, to be pushed towards industrialized death. Even though I know that there’s no way that Berest could know what her relatives actually said to each other or what, for example, Myriam’s thoughts were as she huddled in the trunk of a car as her mother- and sister-in-law helped her escape from Paris to Vichy-controlled Provence, it’s impossible to resist the veracity of what Berest writes.

I can’t praise The Postcard highly enough.

This ticked a lot of my favorite topics: Parisian intellectual life, family history and an author I'm starting to love.
It was a fascinating reading experience, a story that kept me in thrall and i loved.
The author is a master storyteller and the translation worked very well.
Highly recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher for this arc, all opinions are mine

3.5 stars. In 2003, the Berest household receives a strange, anonymous postcard that contains only the names of four members of their family that perished at Auschwitz six decades earlier. They set is aside and continue with their lives, until Anne decides in 2019 that she simply must know the origin of the postcard and why it was sent to them. We then embark on a journey into the past, as Anne's mother recounts the lives of her lost family members. After the stories end, Anne goes on a physical search for information and answers.

The Postcard is (in my opinion) a two-part story. The first part is the historical recounting of the lives of Ephraïm, Emma, Noémie, and Jacques. As expected, it is tragic and heartbreaking — merciless in its factual recounting, but still packed with emotion and the devastation that can only come from these kinds of losses. The second part of the book details Anne's search for answers, taking her to the office of a private investigator and then to the family's old village. I found this part interesting, the door-to-door interactions with neighbors all wildly different but all with a shadow of the sinister.

The ultimate resolution of this book was satisfying, if not what I expected. I enjoyed the stories of the lives of the lost Rabinovitch family members, but I was expecting this story to focus more on Anne's search for answers. Rating translated fiction that I don't LOVE always makes me hesitate (perhaps the original contains nuance that I'm missing by reading it in English), but I found the pace of this book to be pretty slow and the tone rather dry. Still, it's a worthwhile addition to WWII fiction, as I think the plot setup and structure are pretty unique.

Thank you to Anne Berest, Europa Editions, and NetGalley for my advance digital copy.

This novel was first published in France in 2021, winning several awards. Is it actually fiction? It seems to be a memoir or autobiography. It is clearly based on facts and research, but there are gaps in the details that Berest needed to fill in because so many of the individuals who would have known the specific details died in the Holocaust.

The theme of this novel can be found in a quote from an interview with Berest: “Why did my family not leave? Will I, who come from a family that failed to get out of harm’s way, be able to?” (Jewish Telegraphic Agency, 2022)

A postcard with four names on it arrives at the home of Berest’s mother, Lélia Picabia, in 2003. The postcard has four names printed on it ... the mother’s grandparents and Lélia’s mother’s two siblings. All died in the Holocaust.

After many years, the author feels that she must learn the origin of the postcard. Who sent it? Why did they send it? Was it a memorial? Was it a threat? The author has significant research skills, as does the mother ... who also has a huge “archive” of material. Together, though sometimes with reluctance, they peel back the layers of history.

This is a fascinating read. And the quote above may well be relevant today for many people. Are we entering an era when the political atmosphere may cause people to ask, “Why did my family not leave?”

This book is genius! A profoundly moving story of a woman’s quest to discover her family’s origins at the worst time time in history. What happened to her family is not a new story but is so moving and engrossing that you can’t wait to turn the next page. A remarkable book.

"The Postcard" is a terrifically interesting book about a Jewish French woman's attempt to discover the history of her family during World War II. What makes it so special is the way that Berest creates a fiction-like narrative to tell the history of her family. While details are clearly embellished, the core of the story remains intact and her discoveries seem credible. I found this book fascinating--a story of one European Jewish family that stands in for a million others.

This book is the perfect example of ambivalence for me: I love it, but I am disturbed. The book is about the Holocaust and the multi-generational ripples of Antisemitism on a French Jewish family. The book is heart-breaking and moving and whatever you want to call it… but there’s the problem, right on the cover: it says “A Novel”. Now is it? What is real? What is fiction? I couldn’t wrap my head around it and I could not ignore it. France has a particular subgenre in literary fiction called auto-fiction. I’m usually okay with it, but not this time.

Anne Berest’ mother receives in the early 2000s an anonymous postcard with just 4 names written on it. It shocks and upsets her but she refuses to explain any of it to her daughter. Its only 20 years later than Anne takes an interest. Turns out that the names are those of the parents and siblings of Anne’s mother, all of them victims of the Nazi persecutions and killed in extermination camps. So the question becomes: what happened to those relatives? And also, who sent the postcard?

But it’s not the only questions by far. Anne Berest is quite ambivalent about her Jewish heritage, not practicing at all but even hiding it in some occasions, because antisemitism still exists in France and sometimes life is easier when you don’t say you’re Jewish. She gets challenged by more religious Jewish friends: is she really Jewish?

The book is torn between 3 pilars: the reconstitution of Anne Berest’ Jewish relatives destiny from Russia to their tragic deaths, and of her grandmother’s improbable survival, the suspenseful mystery around the postcard, and Anne’s contemporary private doubts and interrogations. I really loved this long genealogy of strong women. I was deeply moved, but the word “novel” kept nagging at me. Did she make up some of the most melodramatic parts of the story? Did she invent details of her ancestors’ journey she had no information about? I really think the book works have warranted a postface.

Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley. I received a free copy of this book for review consideration.

Where to begin?? I loved this book. I greatly enjoy reading works in translation, and The Postcard, with its powerful story and engaging style, was just brilliant.

The Postcard details the history of author Anne Berest's Jewish grandparents and great-grandparents as they navigate Europe to escape persecution. Berest's writing not only conveys the trauma and loss of her family members in a sensitive but deeply moving way, but she also discusses her own experience as a Jewish woman disconnected from her culture and her past.

This is the perfect read for fans of moving, historical fiction who are interested in exploring nonfiction or memoir. Thanks to Europa for the eARC!

Beautifully translated story of what it means to be a family. Who tells your story when everyone is gone? This is moving and heartbreaking and life affirming. I cannot think of enough adjectives to describe how thoughtful this story is.
Recommended for anyone looking for a family saga that straddles the line between history and present day.

"The Postcard" by Anne Berest is a captivating novel that not only explores the themes of love, loss, and self-discovery, but also delves into the author's personal struggle with her identity as a Jew in modern-day France. Berest's ancestors experienced pogroms in Eastern Europe, which forced the family to seek refuge elsewhere, eventually settling in Palestine and later France. The story of their creation of new lives and assimilation into French society is tinged with success and security, but ultimately ends in tragedy and unimaginable horror.

Berest's exquisite writing style brings to life the sights, sounds, and sensations of Paris, where the novel is set. The story follows the journey of Louise, who finds a postcard from her ex-boyfriend and embarks on a journey of self-discovery that uncovers her past and its impact on her present.

Parallel to Louise's journey, Berest shares her personal struggle to understand her Jewish identity. Although she knew she was Jewish, Berest had no clear understanding of what that meant. Her family's history, with its tragic events and displacement, serves as a reminder of the importance of understanding one's roots and heritage.

Overall, "The Postcard" is a beautifully written and thought-provoking novel that explores the complexities of love, loss, and self-discovery, while also shining a light on the challenges of understanding one's identity in a rapidly changing world. Berest's recounting of her family's experiences and her personal journey add a layer of depth and richness to the story, making it an unforgettable sad and emotional read.

This books was such a compelling read. I was just looking for what to read next and sampling various ARC's when I realised I had been reading for hours. The story of Anne's family draws you in immediately and you can't stop reading it is so immediate. I feel like this will still be into five by the end of the year, it's not often you find a book like this.

Intense and affecting, Berest’s novel - an auto-fiction - traces familiar history from a personal perspective. She is her own readership,as she pieces together her Jewish family’s history, both horrible and heroic. First comes her mother’s research, then her own, putting flesh in the bones of ancestors lost in time. The conclusion is powerful.

A deeply moving and gripping tale of persecution and family trauma. One day in January 2003 an intriguing postcard arrives at Anne Berest’s family home. On the front a photo of the Opera Garnier in Paris. On the back the names of her maternal great-grandparents and their children Noemie and Jacques, all of whom were murdered in Auschwitz. Not until 15 years later does Berest feel impelled to discover who sent the postcard and why. She sets out on a voyage of discovery which takes her to some dark places indeed. En route she uncovers her family history as well as musing on issues of identity, in particular Jewish identity, and what it means to be Jewish today, not least what it means to be Jewish in contemporary France. A dual-time narrative set in the present and during WWII, the two time frames are seamlessly woven together, with perfect pacing and construction. There are many stories about the Holocaust and its continuing impact, and this is certainly one of the most compelling. A marvellous read.

A gorgeous combination of historical fiction and mystery, pleasantly sprawling, timeless and timely. A gem.

Originally written in French, this beautifully translated story pulled me in from the very first pages, and I still feel, somehow, as though I am inside these pages, and perhaps that they, and this story, will remain a part of me, a part of how I view life. I’ve read numerous stories of the Holocaust, seen movies, but this felt more personal - not because I could relate it to my life, but because it is about the author’s family. How a postcard, sent to the author’s mother, Lélia Picabia, in 2003, with the only words on the postcard being the first names of four people. Her ancestors whose lives ended in the Holocaust.

There was so much they didn’t know, alongside some family stories that they had some knowledge about. The earliest family stories, of their journey from generations ago, to their home in France. The struggles of those who preceded them, and their decisions to move several times over those generations.

While they did enlist assistance over the years to locate the person who had sent the postcard, there is so much more to this story. The desire to find as much truth about these ancestors’ lives, and how their journeys from place to place had impacted their lives as well as the lives of their family in the present time. To be able to know the truth of their family’s history, and to mourn not only for their family, but for all who were lost.

Beautifully written, this is both heartbreaking and beautiful, a book that is destined to be among my top favourite books of 2023.



Pub Date: 16 May 2023


Many thanks for the ARC provided by Europa Editions

The Postcard is a beautifully constructed novel that leads the reader through a journey tracing the family history of the Rabinovitch’s when a post card is mysteriously delivered to the home of the lone survivor, with four names of family members who were killed during the Holocaust. I will never forget Ephraïm, Emma, Noémie, and Jacques. The question is who sent the postcard and why?

A moving novel about the search for identity, family secrets, and the importance of transmitting heritage.

Anne Berest recounts her family experiences through a novel. On January 6th, 2003 her family receives an anonymous postcard with the name of her grandmother’s family. Years after, an episode leads her to search for the sender and the motives of this postcard and discovers about her mother’s family history secrets, the Robinovitch, a family of Jewish migrants who had to move multiple times to different countries in the search for a home where they can live safely, establishing in France and then separated during WWII after her siblings and parents were sent to Auschwitz.

This family story shows how anti-Semitism started spreading through the years, and how after the holocaust there were other events of hatred toward the Jewish community. It portrays very well how hard was to be a Jew, being rejected in many countries and with laws against them. It also shows how life was before, during, and after the Holocaust.

The writer discovered more about her heritage and learned more about Judaism and everything is narrated and shared in this book so I loved learning more about Jewish traditions. Even if I have read many books about WWII and the holocaust, I considered that this one is a great literary contribution rich in history. I highly recommend it!

Thank you Europa and Netgalley for the e-ARC.

Pub Date May 16th, 2023

Who is Jewish? What is a Jew? What does it mean to wonder what it means to be Jewish? Is a Jew defined by skeletal pictures of individuals in work and death camps? Or is it Moses dolls that you can buy on the streets of Warsaw, depicting him holding a penny, insinuating Jews are money grubbers. Why should you run out and get this book when it is published in May? Simple answer..it is authoritative, compelling, commanding, suspenseful and ultimately heartbreaking. It is rare that I have to put a book aside because it upsets me too much but this was a case in point. Be forewarned that there is alot of disturbing material contained with in its 500 pages, but the words leap off the page begging to be devoured. It is too important a book NOT to be read.
Anne Berest's mother, Lelia receives a postcard in 2003 with a picture of the Opera Garnier in Paris on one side, while the other side contained the written names of her mother's grandparents, Ephraim and Emma, and their children, Noemie and Jacques who perished in Auschwitz.. Despite her wonder she filed it away, while the author's identity and objective continued to plague her. Some almost 16 years later, the author Anne and her mom attempt to find out the identity of the sender. This leads to an incredible scouting expedition involving graphologists, private detectives, and good old fashioned elbow grease.The book is divided into two main parts, each of which could have almost been a book on its on. The first part tracing the family's flight from Russia, and their journey to Latvia, Palestine and Paris shattered by increasing anti-semitism and its encroachment into their lives. The wording is so personal that the reader feels she knows the family well, making the horrors only too real. Being called a "dirty Jew" much of my own upbringing, it triggered much sadness. Reflecting the rising of hate in the world today, reading this book became a necessity rather than choice. The second half deals with more Ephraim's daughter, Myriam, her unusual marriage, a threesome, her work in the Resistance, and the birth of Leilia. The question of antisemitism rears its ugly face in a variety of situations including Anne's own world when her daughter shares a fellow child stating that he" didn't like Jewish." There is so much substance in the book that I will only gloss over it here. One of the questions..How does and did the Holocaust and France's role play a part in the French mentality today? Immigration for safety reasons was constantly on the players' minds, as I surmise it may be today as well. And yes, you will find out who sent the postcard as the book is neatly wrapped up in the end.
But it is the sandwich filling that makes this novel so deserving of all the awards it has won. Run. Don't walk . Grab your copy and be consumed for hours. It's just that stellar, upsetting but stellar.