Philippe Grimbert’s “A Secret” revealed in Persian

TEHRAN –(Iranart)- A Persian translation of French author Philippe Grimbert’s second novel “A Secret” has recently been published by Mahi Publications in Tehran.

The book has been translated into Persian by Mahasti Bahreini.

Often children invent a family, another origin, or other parents. The narrator of the book has invented a brother for himself; an older brother, more handsome, stronger, whom he evokes in front of vacation buddies, strangers, and others who cannot contradict the imaginary brother’s existence.

This tyrannical ghost haunted his younger years. Surrounded by silence, bowing under family guilt, the narrator feels the need to recount a past, which he imagines as smooth and peaceful until Louise, an old friend of his parents and confidante of the child, comes clean and suddenly reveals a heavy, overwhelming secret to him.

This invented brother, Simon, really existed, and he died in a concentration camp with his mother, Hannah, Maxime’s first wife. Suddenly, all the weight of this dark and hidden past emerges and upsets the representation of the world that the child had forged. 

He then imagines Maxime and Tania, his parents, living their culpable love. As for the dead without burial, the heroes of a tragedy that had been hidden for too long, they will provoke a real turnaround, it is this revealed secret that gives birth to the narrator's vocation as a psychoanalyst. 

Here the work of writing has become a work of mourning, and the author, while revealing his most intimate life experiences, shows readers how the one who has suffered from silence can become the one who will deliver others from it. 

This book was crowned in 2004 by the Goncourt Prize for high school students and in 2005 by the Literary Grand Prix for readers.

He demonstrates with as much rigor as emotion how the powers of the novel can go a long way in the exploration of the secrets at work in people’s lives. 

Grimbert’s debut novel “Paul’s Little Dress” (La Petite Robe de Paul) was released by Grasset in September 2001.

source: Tehran Times