‘Act of family vengeance’: French defamation case highlights perils of writing autofiction

Complaint against Cecile Desprairies over Nazi collusion novel alleges that resentment permeates the entire work'

The Polish poet Czesaw Miosz is famously credited with the line: When a writer is born into a family, the family is finished." In contemporary European literature, a book these days is often the beginning of a familial feud. With thinly disguised autobiographical accounts of family strife undergoing a sustained boom across the continent, it can increasingly lead to family reunions in courtrooms.

Such was the case with the French historian Cecile Desprairies, who on Wednesday was sued for defamation by her brother and a cousin over the depiction of her late mother and her great-uncle in her 2024 novel La Propagandiste.