Ethnic Cleansers
“I write novels like a filmmaker, but I write films like a novelist,” Philippe Claudel said when “I’ve Loved You So Long,” his first work as director, appeared last year. The comment couldn’t have meant much to American audiences. To us, that powerful and eloquent movie, with Kristin Scott Thomas as a doctor just released from prison, seemed to come out of nowhere. Although Claudel had long been respected as a novelist in France, only one of his previous books had been translated into English. Now his latest novel, “Brodeck,” arrives like a fresh, why-haven’t-we-known-him discovery, revealing him to be as dazzling on the page as he is on the screen. In both works, the central character suffers from survivor’s guilt for a crime that is horrific yet understandable. But the novel’s mythic style couldn’t be more different from the film’s taut psychological realism. “Brodeck” is the Brothers Grimm by way of Kafka. Set in an unnamed, isolated village where people speak their own Germanic ...
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