Book description
Bad Faith tells the story of one of history's most despicable
villains and conmen - Louis Darquier, Nazi collaborator and
'Commissioner for Jewish Affairs', who dissembled his way to power in
the Vichy government and was responsible for sending thousands of
children to the gas chambers. After the war he left France, never to
be brought to justice.
Early on in his career Louis married the alcoholic Myrtle Jones from
Tasmania, equally practised in the arts of fantasy and deception, and
together they had a child, Anne whom they abandoned in England. Her
tragic story is woven through the narrative.
In Carmen Callil's masterful, elegiac and sometimes darkly comic
account, Darquier's rise during the years leading up to the Second
World War mirrors the rise of French anti-Semitism. Epic, haunting,
the product of extraordinary research, this is a study in
powerlessness, hatred and the role of remembrance.
Shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize.
Carmen Callil was born and educated in Melbourne, Australia, and came
to the UK in 1960. In 1972 she founded Virago and ten years later became
Managing Director of Chatto & Windus. In 1994 she was awarded
honorary doctorates by the universities of Sheffield, York, Oxford
Brookes and The Open University. In 1996 she chaired the judging panel
of the Booker Prize. She is the author (with Colm Toibin) of
The
Modern Library: The 200 Best Novels in English since 1950.
She lives in London.
