Autopsy of a Father

Pascale Kramer, recipient of the 2017 Swiss Grand Prize for Literature, is the author of fourteen books, including three novels published in English: The Living, The Child, and Autopsy of a Father, which was named a finalist for the La Closerie des Lilas, Ouest-France, and Orange du Livre prizes. Born in Geneva, she has worked in Los Angeles, and now lives in Paris, where she directs a documentary film festival about children’s rights.Robert Bononno has translated more than two dozen full-length works of fiction and nonfiction from the French and has taught translation at New York University and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. He is a French-American Foundation Translation Prize finalist and the recipient of two National Endowment for the Arts fellowships. He lives in New York.

Advance Praise for Autopsy of a FatherFinalist for the La Closerie des Lilas, Ouest-France, and Orange du Livre Prizes“Restrained, chiseled, implacable, the novels of Pascale Kramer perfectly master the art of creating a diffuse discomfort. Poignant.” —Marie Claire (Switzerland)“This novel masterfully establishes the cross-transmission of misunderstandings within families and those that take root at the heart of society. Ignored, they lead to unimaginable violence, all the way to the cemetery, where not even the dead can rest.” —Le Point“[Kramer’s] fiction penetrates the terrain of the intimate, places itself in the blind spot of analysis and statistics, and makes silent explosions palpable.” —L’Echo“[Kramer’s] talent is to lead us into human interiority from concrete situations, through details that are all the more effective because they’re delivered without judgment. . . . In this autopsy of a recognizable world, there is pleasure to be taken in the text, in spite of the seriousness of the subject.” —Le Devoir“Pascale Kramer depicts a society where misunderstanding and insecurity feed fear, which leads to aggressive mistrust, rejection, and hatred, the fatal poison of which little by little contaminates everyone.” —Avant-Critiques