Cécile Wajsbrot [ France ]

Cécile Wajsbrot was born in Paris in 1954, the daughter of Polish Jews. Her family had fled to France where her grandfather still did not escape deportation to Auschwitz and was put to death in the camp. Both her mother and her grandmother only narrowly escaped a police raid. Recurrent themes in Wajsbrot’s work are her family’s fate and the French state’s collaboration with Nazi Germany which was scarcely – or only belatedly – discussed and acknowledged publicly. She first studied comparative literature before working as a French teacher for eight years pr ior to the publication of her first novel, »Une vie à soi« (1982; t: A life on one's own). She later worked as a journalist and literary editor for pr ess and radio. Since the early nineties she has been working as a free-lance writer and translator from English and German. Her translations include works by Virginia Woolf, Suzan Wicks, Charles Olson, Gert Ledig and Wolfgang Büscher.
Wajsbrot’s works offer a sharp contrast to the polemics and pathos of high-level contemporary French literature as re pr esented by writers such as Houellebecq and Beigbeder. At the same time the writer reacts against the artistic, self-referential mannerism of the nouveau roman and the notion of literature that revolves around postmodern »écriture«. Wajsbrot summarises her much respected polemic »Pour la littérature« (1999; t: For literature) as follows: »The nouveau roman and everything that followed on from it in France conceal a silence. ... The écriture is essentially narcissistic. Literature, by contrast, includes others in its re pr esentations.« In her own works she deals with the role of recollection and memory, plumbing the depths of the potential for communication between people.
Recently her relatively early work »La Trahison« (1997; t: The treason) was published in German. It is the story of a long-serving radio pr esenter who is interviewed by a young female colleague and begins to face his own past that he had hitherto sup pr essed. Recalling his cowardly behaviour towards his Jewish lover during the Occupation finally leads him to suicide. The story »Nation par Barbès« (2001), often described as a »chamber play«, depicts three quite different personalities: a Bulgarian woman who has become an illegal immigrant in Paris, an adventurous student and a shy young secretary whose paths cross in the metro, without the hopes any of them have of the others being fulfilled. In »Caspar Friedrich Strasse« (2002; t: Caspar Friedrich Street) Wajsbrot, who has also been spending time in Berlin for years, writes the speech of a fictional East German poet. At the official opening of a street he voices recollections of German history as well as of his own past. The author’s most recent work »Mémorial« (2005; t: Memorial) gives an account of a young woman travelling in Poland in search of her ancestors. It is to be published in German next s pr ing. Wajsbrot is currently a guest of the Artists-in-Berlin pr ogramme (2007/08) of the German Academic Exchange Service.

© international literature festival berlin