El nombre del padre

In the midst of promoting her debut novel, *The Consent*, which caused a social and literary earthquake, Vanessa Springora receives a call from the police asking her to identify the lifeless body of her father, a fabulist and misanthrope who had become a stranger to her. But as they empty his house, something catches her eye: two old photographs of her paternal grandfather displaying a swastika. This discovery shatters the story of her beloved Czech grandfather, Josef, who was forcibly recruited into the Nazi army, deserted in France, collaborated with the Americans during the liberation, and was a "privileged refugee" as a dissident of the communist regime. Thus begins an obsessive search to discover who this man who gave her her surname really was and how he could or could not have "consented" to the barbarity. Over the course of two years, Vanessa will scour family documents, Czech, German, and French archives, and meet with witnesses to try to piece together a plausible account. But there are always pieces missing.