Silencing Holocaust in Sylvie Germain’s Fiction

Abstract

Silences concerning the Shoah con-stitute a leitmotiv in Sylvie Germain’s narrative work. Motive and motivation intentionally emerge as a proteiform phenomenon from the writer-philosopher’s genius and from the his-torical and ideological substance, which imbue the novelist in every section of her literary creation. The purpose of this study is to interpret those silences in a set of selected novels where the Shoah takes up either a primary or a secondary role, but in any case a rele-vant one. To this end this study carries out a detailed study of the silence com-ing from the narrator’s origin, the victims, the murderers or God. Beyond the silence in humans and supreme beings, this study also investigates the spatial silence in that apocalyptic world.