The novel “My Name is Brodeck,” awarded the Goncourt Prize for high school students, is compared to works by Camus and Kafka’s “The Reader,” and Kūtzee’s “Disgrace.”
This is one of those books that you simply can’t forget—you return to it in your thoughts again and again, recalling the lines, words, and images.
A man who survived a concentration camp by miracle—Brodeck, who has already said goodbye to life more than once— is forced to go against his nature to live on and return to the beloved woman. Day by day, he remembers everything he had to endure, and, like a puzzle, pieces his life together, pondering the motives of those people who tried to break him—and to break his life.