French historian accused of libel over Nazi ‘collaborator’ family novel

A Nazi rally in Nuremberg, Germany, 1937. The Nazi occupation of part of France occurred from 1940 to 1944. Photo / Universal History Archive, Getty Images

A historian of the Nazi occupation of France was being sued today by her own relatives for alleged libel after she promoted her first novel as inspired by her family’s history.

Cecile Desprairies, 68, says her debut novel The Propagandist - published in English last year - is inspired by her own childhood, but family members have accused her of lying and want the title removed from bookstores.

“It’s a fact: I grew up in a collaborationist family. They all were - to varying degrees,” Desprairies said after the book came out in French in 2023.

She was not present in court but a lawyer represented her.

In the novel, the narrator’s family all have different names to those of the author’s real-life relatives, but the plaintiffs - the author’s brother and another relative - say they are clearly identifiable.

In a legal complaint against Desprairies and her publisher seen by AFP, they accuse her of libel against her mother, great-uncle and half-brother of her grandmother.

Both deny the charges.

The narrator’s mother - who is described as a “fervent collaborator” and propagandist during the Nazi occupation of part of France from 1940 to 1944 - was inspired by the writer’s own mother, they argue.

The same goes for the great-uncle and half-brother of her grandmother, add the plaintiffs. They filed their complaint as direct descendants of the alleged victims, less than three months after the book’s publication in French.

“The author’s resentment toward the targeted individuals permeates the entire work, which is conceived as a genuine act of family vengeance,” they said.

The plaintiffs argue the writer acted in “utter bad faith” and there is an “absence of evidence” for the alleged collaboration of their relatives with the Nazis.

‘Rot-riddled family romance’

The book received rave reviews when it came out in English last year.

The Financial Times called the novel “a harrowing but elegantly constructed rot-riddled family romance”, while the New Yorker described it as “a deeply personal act of expiation”.

Desprairies has argued that since she wrote a novel and not a historical essay, some fiction is allowed.

“Most of the protagonists I was able to draw inspiration from were dead, so there’s a liberation of speech,” she told French television in 2023.

She added that “fiction was the only way to account for an era, for its relationship to the past and to history”.

She says she found a Nazi propaganda poster in the attic of the family home, and sent a scanned copy to the judiciary, according to the complaint.

But the plaintiffs said the poster bears the same tear marks as one conserved at a Paris library, a copy of which can be downloaded.

She has also sent the judiciary a photograph of three people she said included her mother on a mountain in winter, arguing it showed “clear attachment to the sports values advocated by the Reich”.

Desprairies has a new novel published by another publisher, titled La Fille du Doute (The Daughter of Doubt) coming out in French next week.

-Agence France-Presse