Collaboration Author:Keith Botsford In interviews, the author has acknowledged that the fate of Losers has always absorbed him. How can one pass judgment on another without understanding the context of his actions, his motives and the situation from which these derive? A great national hero, Pétain thought he was saving France and its people; as prime minister of the occupied zone... more », Pierre Laval thought that only by a Franco-German alliance could Europe be saved from the Bolsheviks.
In this absorbing, critically acclaimed and controversial novel about the last days of the Vichy régime and the German occupation of France, Botsford follows the unfolding apocalypse as seen by the Marshall, Philippe Pétain, and his godson, heir and physician, Bernard Ménétrel, as they are shuttled from one château to another, packed off - just in time - to the madness of Sigmaringen, and finally to prison in Fresnes.
This is not just a study of defeat, but also of character. Bernard has the care of the Marshall's body, but not that of his own soul. Yet he has to deal with the horrible events of '44 to '46 as a participant, not an observer: his childhood friend's exterminations in Russia, Céline in Sigmaringen, the abortive trial and execution of Pierre Laval. To read Collaboration, an Italian critic noted, is not just to revisit a sordid period in the death-throes of Nazi Germany, but to be taken by a masterful writer through the psychology of defeat, of what happens when one's ideals turn out to be 'wrong' and have to be paid for.« less