Book Review

Brodeck's Report

By Philippe Claudel

Published by MacLehose Press

A portly, well-dressed (nay, dapper) man arrives in an isolated European village with a horse, a donkey and his luggage in tow. He puts up at one of the local inns, unpacks and proceeds to explore the surrounding mountains at his leisure.

His presence profoundly unnerves the villagers. The Second World War and its horrors not long over, their habitual mistrust of strangers is heightened to an almost hysterical, albeit whispered, degree. The stranger, who acquires a number of nicknames based on his physical characteristics, does little to assuage their fear, choosing neither to say where he has come from, nor why he has settled among them.

Within a year, the Anderer (‘Other’), as Brodeck chooses to call him in his report, is dead, murdered in Schloss’ inn by a cabal of men who can no longer stand his presence or understand his silence. Commanded by the assassins to write a report of the incident – even though he was not present at the killing – Brodeck decides to compose both an official document and a more personal reminscence of a gentle man who died for being different.

In doing so, Brodeck reveals the terrible wartime traumas he suffered. He paints a vivid, Hieronymous Bosch-like, picture of the grotesque villagers – their jealousies, rivalries, squabbles and prejudices.

Claudel’s novel is slow. S-L-O-W. Its mysteries don’t so much unravel as emerge in geological time. At the outset, Brodeck says, ‘“I must not go too fast,”’ and he is true to his word: themes are visited and revisited, detail is painstakingly added to detail until the true horror of the Anderer’s murder is revealed.

What also becomes apparent is Brodeck’s apartness from his neighbours. Distinguished by both his learning and his experience in the war (no one expected him to return), he is respected but kept at a distance. No wonder he senses ‘“things behind my back – movements, noises, staring eyes.”’

Brodeck’s Report is a beautifully written, lyrical condemnation of small-minded evil. The Anderer’s murder plays out in the wake of a much, much larger crime against twentieth-century European humanity, but the careful intensity with which Claudel/Brodeck unveils the despicable death of a single man somehow jolts the heart as painfully as the story of the millions condemned to the death camps.

Reviewed by James Smith, Booktrust website editor

Translator: John Cullen