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How to pronounce Anne Berest: burr-EST
Anne Berest, born September 15, 1979, is the bestselling co-author of How to Be Parisian Wherever You Are and the author of a novel based on the life of French writer Françoise Sagan. With her sister Claire, she is also the author of Gabriële, a critically acclaimed biography of her great-grandmother, Gabriële Buffet-Picabia, Marcel Duchamp's lover and muse. She is the great-granddaughter of the painter Francis Picabia. For her work as a writer and prize-winning showrunner, she has been profiled in publications such as French Vogue and Haaretz newspaper. The recipient of numerous literary awards, The Postcard was a finalist for the Goncourt Prize and has been a long-selling bestseller in France.
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How did your journey to writing The Postcard begin?
On the morning of January 6, 2003, on a snowy day, my mother received an anonymous postcard in her mailbox. There were only four words written on it, that's all, nothing else, but four first names: Ephraïm, Emma, Noémie and Jacques. My mother recognized them immediately—they were the first names of members of our family who had died at Auschwitz in 1942. In other words, these people died during the Holocaust because they were Jews, and sixty years later, someone sent a postcard with their first names, and this someone wanted to remain anonymous. Obviously the first question was: "Who?" And the second: "Why?"
Was there anything else about the postcard your mother received that made you think there was more to discover?
There were a lot of strange things on the postcard that caught my eye. For example, the stamp was upside down. While I was investigating, I learned that an upside-down stamp was used as a code between Resistances fighters during the war. For example, if they wrote, "Sunny weather, Dad is doing great," with an upside-down stamp, it meant the opposite. Another strange thing on the postcard was the picture of the Garnier Opéra House in ...
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