Les Disparus de Daniel Mendelsohn et La Carte postale d’Anne Berest : deux succès aux antipodes

Abstract

This study compares the success of two books written by descendants of Holocaust victims in France. With The Lost. A search for six of six million (2006) / Les Disparus (2007), Daniel Mendelsohn brought from the United States a new look at the Holocaust and a true originality in the restitution of this event. Fifteen years later, French writer Anne Berest’s La Carte postale (The Postcard) (2021) trivializes the model of third-generation family investigation that The Lost represented. The study first details the markers of success (sales, prices, reception in the media) which already indicate two very different target audiences, then – in a second part – compares these investigations which, despite some similarities, are differently narrated, Anne Berest even adopting on the essential the opposite positioning of Daniel Mendelsohn. Finally, the last part relies on readers’ opinions to verify and clarify the trivialization detailed in the second part.