Synopses & Reviews
Review
Rousso has set out to provide not just another narrative of les années noires--the years of defeat, occupation, of the phantom 'French State' and the civil war--but a study of the way the Vichy episode has been perceived and perverted by the French ever since. The result is a brilliant and intemperate book that is also a tract for the times. The Economist
Review
Succeeds as a practical demonstration, for a particularly vivid case, of how to study a people grappling with a past. It is remarkable how few similar works there are...One understands a historian's hesitation before the poorly documented and ill-defined wider popular memory as a subject. Rousso shows us, however, how dramatic and revealing this genre can be. Robert O. Paxton
Review
This is an original and thought-provoking work, a 'must' for anyone interested in the political and cultural psychology of post-war France. New York Review of Books
Synopsis
From the Liberation purges to the Barbie trial, France has struggled with the memory of the Vichy experience: a memory of defeat, occupation, and repression. In this provocative study, Henry Rousso examines how this proud nation--a nation where reality and myth commingle to confound understanding--has dealt with les années noires. Specifally, he studies what the French have chosen to remember and what have chosen to conceal.
About the Author
Henry Roussois researcher at the <>Institut d'Histoire du Temps Prandeacute;sent(Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique), Paris.
Table of Contents
Foreword by Stanley Hoffmann
Abbreviations
Introduction: The Neurosis
Part 1: EVOLUTION OF THE SYNDROME
1. Unfinished Mourning (1944-1954)
2. Repressions (1954-1971)
3. The Broken Mirror (1971-1974)
4. Obsession (after 1974): Jewish Memory
5. Obsession (after 1974): The World of Politics
Part 2: TRANSMISSION OF THE SYNDROME
6. Vectors of Memory
7. Diffuse Memory
Conclusion
Appendix 1: Chronology of Events
Appendix 2: French Films and World War II
Bibliography
Notes
Acknowledgments
Index