A Paris court has found a historian of the Nazi occupation of France not guilty of libel for having described her mother and other family members as “collaborationist” during World War II.
Cecile Desprairies, 68, says her debut autobiographical novel The Propagandist – published in English last year – is inspired by her own childhood, but her brother and a cousin have accused her of lying and want the title removed from bookstores.
They sued Desprairies and her publisher for libel.
The civil court on Wednesday recognised that the plaintiffs may have been “upset” by the novel and “lack of any conclusive evidence” to support her account of the family’s history, according to a copy of the ruling seen by AFP on Thursday.
But neither had it seen evidence that Desprairies wrote the book with the intent to harm them, it said.
During a hearing in January, the author and her publisher’s lawyer had argued some creative licence was allowed in a novel, even if autobiographical.
“I ask you to give precedence to freedom of creation and expression over family quarrels,” attorney Benedicte Amblard had argued.
After the book came out in French in 2023, Desprairies had said she grew up “in a collaborationist family”.
In her book, the narrator’s mother is described as a “fervent collaborator” and propagandist during the Nazi occupation of part of France from 1940 to 1944.
To support her claim, Desprairies said she had found a Nazi propaganda poster in the attic of the family home, according to the complaint filed by her relatives. But the plaintiffs said it bore the same tear marks as one conserved at a Paris library, a copy of which could be downloaded.
She has also sent the judiciary a photograph of three people she said included her mother on a mountain in winter, arguing it showed “clear attachment to the sports values advocated by the Reich”.
Desprairies in January published a new novel published by another publisher, titled “La Fille du Doute” (“The Daughter of Doubt”).
