The long shadow

摘要

Franz-olivier giesbert is a French novelist, biographer, television presenter and newspaper editor: in other words, an average French "intellectual". Except that, as he reveals in this arresting book, he and his mother were violently beaten throughout his childhood by a tormented father, a former American GI who never recovered from the anguish of having lived through D-Day. The book is a bestseller in France, one of a crop of books confessing to dark relationships with members of an author's family. There are no plans as yet to publish it in English.