Magnus

Author: Sylvie Germain

Translator: Christine Donougher  

Magnus is a deeply moving and enigmatic novel about the Holocaust. It has been Sylvie Germain's most commercially successful novel in France.

Magnus is a man searching for his own identity, who pieces together the complex puzzle of his life, which turns out to be closer to a painting by Edward Munch than the romantic tale of family heroism and self-sacrifice on which he was nurtured by the woman he believed was his mother.

In Magnus, Sylvie Germain uses imagination and intuition to unlock the enigma of human life and confer on history the power of myth and fable.

Magnus won the Goncourt Lyceen Prize, selected by French High School Students as the best novel of the year from the main Goncourt Prize Shortlist. It is a short and profound novel suitable for 16-year-olds upwards and is a good starting point for exploration of the Holocaust.