French Literature Reviews - 2026

A. Schulte Nordholt, Perec, Modiano, Raczymow. The Generation After and the Memory of the Shoah
Novel and Narrative Prose

Annelise Schulte Nordholt

Perec, Modiano, Raczymow. La génération d'après et la Mémoire de la shoah

Editions Rodopi

"Faux Titre" series

Amsterdam/New York, NY 2008. 335 pp.

ISBN (ean13): 978-90-420-2412-0

Publisher's Description:

Since the 1970s, France has witnessed a resurgence of Jewish memory surrounding the Occupation and the Shoah, which has gone hand in hand with an extraordinary flowering of novels and narratives. A new generation of writers has emerged: the "generation after", comprising the children of survivors and child survivors. To date, few critics have recognized the powerful unity that connects these works, despite their diverse styles. This volume offers a comprehensive study of the "literature of the generation after" through a comparative analysis of three major bodies of work: those of Georges Perec, Patrick Modiano, and Henri Raczymow. How does one speak? How can one articulate an experience—that of the Shoah—which one did not live through, or experienced only minimally, and which has been transmitted only with great difficulty, as an absence or a disappearance? Yet it is precisely this "absent memory" that lies at the very heart of these three oeuvres. It finds expression through a poetics closely aligned with the formal experimentation of the Oulipo and the Nouveau Roman. What writing practices does each of these three authors adopt? And how do they transform them over the course of their work?

Table of Contents
Acknowledgements
Foreword
Prologue: Historical, Psychoanalytic, and Literary Perspectives
Part One: Testimony and Fiction
Chapter 1: A Witness Who Saw Nothing. Georges Perec: Un homme qui dort
Chapter 2: Testimony through Fiction. Patrick Modiano: Dora Bruder
Chapter 3: Neither Victim nor Witness. Henri Raczymow and the Difficulty of Writing the Shoah
Part Two: Writing Place
Chapter 4: A Vanished World
Chapter 5: Absent Memory
Chapter 6: Remembrance through Place: Rue des boutiques obscures and W ou le souvenir d'enfance
Chapter 7: Writing Space
Epilogue: Autobiography and Photography
Bibliography

Since the 1970s, France has witnessed a resurgence of Jewish memory surrounding the Occupation and the Shoah, which has gone hand in hand with an extraordinary flowering of novels and narratives. A new generation of writers has emerged, known as the generation after, comprising the children of survivors and child survivors. This volume examines the literature produced by this group through a comparative analysis of three major bodies of work, considering how writers articulate an experience they did not directly live through and the transmission of memory as an absence or disappearance.

The analysis investigates the writing practices adopted by authors and how these practices evolve, aligning with formal experimentation akin to the Oulipo and the Nouveau Roman. Readers interested in French narrative prose and the literary representation of historical memory may find this study relevant to their inquiries.