The novel is about Brodeck and the remote French village in which he lives, near the German border, in the years following a genocidal war. The implications are that it is the Second World War, though that is never made explicit, and for good reason. I’ll come to that shortly. Brodeck is a survivor of a concentration-style camp, where he was sent because of his outsider status. Even Brodeck does not know where he came from, other than he was adopted by an old lady and brought to the village when he was young. Now, when another stranger – ‘the Anderer’, or the Other – comes to the village, tensions in the community are brought to a catastrophic, violent head. The Anderer is killed, and Brodeck – who repeatedly assures us he has ‘nothing to do with it’ – is charged with writing up an official report to explain why the murder happened, and why the villagers shouldn’t be blamed for their actions.

Writing this narrative about the extremes of human cruelty invokes the all-too-recent memories of the camp, and the depravity than humans can sink to. He survived the camp because he let himself be tortured and humiliated without complaint, and by the final days of the war he had become Brodeck-the-Dog, literally being led around on a leash by a guard, forced to sleep with the animals, and eat the same food in the same way as them. He lost his humanity, in essence, just as the guard lost his by his actions. Now, Brodeck must explain why the villagers lost theirs and killed the Anderer who, they thought, knew too much about them.

It seems fitting, then, that Claudel did not make the timing, nor the location, explicit, for if war shows us anything it’s that humans are capable of truly horrific things, regardless of time or place. The novel therefore takes on a fable-like quality; it is not just these villagers in that time, it is all humanity at all time. Indeed, one of the things that struck me during our discussion of the book was that even Brodeck himself ends up being complicit with the villagers’ actions – he has to be by writing what they want to read in the Report – purely because he is in fear for his life. He is, in that sense, only following orders, much like the guards who tortured him in the camp. That is not to equate him with them, but it is one more way in which Claudel drives home that anyone is, ultimately, capable of anything.

Another major theme in this book is language, and the use and importance of it. Local dialects act as markers, for good and bad. When he is very young, the dialect he speaks with Fedorine, his adoptive mother, is different to that which is spoken in the village. This immediately marks them as Other. Similarly, when he is outwith the village, hearing someone speak that old dialect automatically forges a bond between Brodeck and the speaker, even if he doesn’t get to know them personally. In the same way, Brodeck finds out through a letter from an old teacher that the soldiers who occupy the village during the war tell the locals that there is no reason why they shouldn’t get along (once they have given up anyone ‘different’ to ethnic cleansing) because their languages are so similar. And it is language that helps Brodeck reacclimatise to the world after his time in the camp, when a stranger finds him walking and takes him in for a few days, feeding and washing and talking to him:

‘As for me, I took a curious pleasure in being surrounded by his words. Thanks to them I felt I was returning to the language, the language behind which there lay, prostrate, weak, and still sick, a humanity that only needed to heal.’

Brodeck’s Report is a stunning book, and praise should also be heaped upon John Cullen, who translated it from the original French. In a book where language plays such an important role, I am pleased that the translation is so beautiful in and of itself. So many themes can be teased out of this novel that I fear I have not even begun to do it justice here, so instead I implore you all to simply read it, and I hope you all find it as rewarding, moving, and sobering as I did.

You can read Simon’s and Kim’s final thoughts on the book too.