Longlisted for the Prix Goncourt 2011

Described as 'one of the most significant novels of this year' by L'Express, Monsieur Le Commandant is the story of French Academician and Nazi sympathiser Paul-Jean Husson, who writes a letter to his local SS officer in 1942 with shocking consequences.

'The story of France's anti-Semitism is one much told by historians: it has seldom been written about so powerfully by a novelist' The Spectator 

French Academician and Nazi sympathiser Paul-Jean Husson writes a letter to his local SS officer in the autumn of 1942.

Tormented by an illicit passion for Ilse, his German daughter-in-law, Husson has taken a decision that will devastate several lives, including his own. The letter is intended to explain his actions. It is a dramatic, sometimes harrowing, story that begins in the years leading up to the war, when following the accidental drowning of his daughter, Husson's previously gilded life begins to unravel. And through Husson's confession, Romain Slocombe gives the reader a startling picture of a man's journey: from pillar of the French Establishment and World War One hero, to outspoken supporter of Nazi ideology and the Vichy government.