From the Liberation purges to the Barbie trial, France has struggled with the memory of the Vichy experience: a memory of defeat, occupation, and repression. In this provocative study, Henry Rousso examines how this proud nation-a nation where reality and myth commingle to confound understanding-has dealt with les annees noires. Specifically, he studies what the French have chosen to remember-and to conceal.

About the Author
Henry Rousso is a researcher at the Institut d'Histoire du Temps Present (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique), Paris. Stanley Hoffmann (1928-2015) was Paul and Catherine Buttenwieser University Professor at Harvard University.

Reviews
Rousso has set out to provide not just another narrative of les annees noires-the years of defeat, occupation, of the phantom 'French State' and the civil war-but a study of the way the Vichy episode has been perceived and perverted by the French ever since. The result is a brilliant and intemperate book that is also a tract for the times. * The Economist *
Succeeds as a practical demonstration, for a particularly vivid case, of how to study a people grappling with a past. It is remarkable how few similar works there are... One understands a historian's hesitation before the poorly documented and ill-defined wider popular memory as a subject. Rousso shows us, however, how dramatic and revealing this genre can be. -- Robert O. Paxton * New York Review of Books *
This is an original and thought-provoking work, a 'must' for anyone interested in the political and cultural psychology of post-war France. -- Nelly Wilson * Jewish Quarterly *



Book Information
ISBN 9780674935396
Author Henry Rousso
Format Paperback
Page Count 400
Imprint Harvard University Press
Publisher Harvard University Press
Weight(grams) 567g