Author(s): Anne Berest

Fiction | 2023 Staff Favourites | Lisa Recommends

A moving novel based on the true story of a family's endurance and pain, and a heartfelt exploration of Jewish identity in a secular society. January 2003. The Berest family receive a mysterious, unsigned postcard. On one side was an image of the Opera Garnier; on the other, the names of their relatives who were killed in Auschwitz: Ephraim, Emma, Noemie and Jacques.   Years later, Anne sought to find the truth behind this postcard. She journeys 100 years into the past, tracing the lives of her ancestors from their flight from Russia following the revolution, their journey to Latvia, Palestine, and Paris, the war and its aftermath. What emerges is a thrilling and sweeping tale that shatters her certainties about her family, her country, and herself.   At once a gripping investigation into family secrets, a poignant tale of mothers and daughters, and an enthralling portrait of 20th-century Parisian intellectual and artistic life, The Postcard tells the story of a family devastated by the Holocaust and yet somehow restored by love and the power of storytelling.