The Postcard

A National Indie Bestseller and Winner of the American Choix Goncourt Prize, Anne Berest's The Postcard is an enthralling investigation into family secrets, a vivid portrait of twentieth-century Parisian intellectual and artistic life, and a poignant tale of a Jewish family devastated by the Holocaust and partly restored through the power of storytelling.

Together with the holiday cards, an anonymous postcard is delivered to the Berest family home. On the front, a photo of the Opéra Garnier in Paris. On the back, the names of Anne Berest's maternal great-grandparents, Ephraïm and Emma Rabinovitch, and their children, Noémie and Jacques--all killed at Auschwitz. Is it an exhortation? A tasteless joke? A threat?

Anne, the heroine of this novel, is moved to discover who sent the postcard and why. Aided by her chain-smoking mother and others, including a private detective, a graphologist, she embarks on a journey to discover the fate of the Rabinovitch family. What emerges is a moving saga that shatters long-held certainties about Anne's family, her country, and herself.