Colonial Shadows of Indochina and a Divided Family: Adrien Genoudet

Adrien Genoudet's novel Nancy-Saigon (Seuil, 2025) begins with an archaeological gesture of remembrance: After his grandmother Simone's cremation, the narrator receives a box of letters labeled "Nancy-Saïgon" and a traditional blue Indochinese garment, an Áo Dài, which was found in her coffin. These artifacts form the starting point of a journey into the past that explores the intertwining of private trauma and the broader trauma of colonialism. Adrien Genoudet is a French author, filmmaker, and scholar who specializes in the intersection of history, images, and narration. His work—ranging from films and essays to comics—examines how visual media interpret historical events and shape memory. He acts not only as a researcher but also as a storyteller, making historical traces visible and uncovering hidden histories. This dual role as historian and storyteller defines his work, as he combines scholarly rigor with artistic sensibility. With a matter-of-fact yet poetic style, he processes existing visual material and creates new narratives that illuminate complex themes such as war, identity, and memory. Works such as Nancy-Saigon and Le Champ des cris demonstrate his ability to make history a multifaceted and interdisciplinary experience.

The novel unfolds as an intense exploration of the fragility of memory and the subjectivity of truth. The correspondence between Simone in Nancy and Paul Sanzach, an officer in Indochina, is riddled with omissions, deliberate lies, and unspoken fears. Paul's letters, initially marked by the "naive enthusiasm of the first 'Pasteur'" ("naïveté bruyante du premier-Pasteur"), reveal a growing moral decay as he witnesses and participates in atrocities. The physical distance between the lovers corresponds to an emotional and moral alienation that transforms Simone in France into a "Penélope," a woman trapped in endless waiting and solitude. The novel's narrative is further enriched by metafictional elements, as the narrator repeatedly reflects on his own role as a researcher and interpreter of family history. He was “convinced that everything played out between the lines” (“J'étais persuadé que tout se jouait entre les lignes”), and that the “aesthetics of the unspoken” plays a central role, since the horrors of war are often not directly named but only hinted at. The female characters, Simone, Édithe, and Linh, are not merely victims of circumstance but develop different forms of resistance and survival. Linh’s apparent adaptation as a “Congaï” transforms into active resistance, while Édithe, as a “superfluous daughter” (“fille de trop”), becomes the tenacious preserver of the family history.

Nancy-Saigon The novel interweaves stories that illuminate both the private family history and the colonial crimes of the Indochina War. The narrative threads can be primarily divided into the story of the unnamed narrator in the present, the past of his grandparents Simone and Paul Sanzach, Paul's experiences in the Indochina War, and the fate of the enigmatic Tilleul. The narrator's family in Adrien Genoudet's novel is deeply divided, mainly due to the physical and emotional separation of his grandparents, Simone and Paul Sanzach, whose correspondence is marked by deception and reveals Paul's growing indifference towards his family in France. Their daughter Édithe is marginalized as "la fille de trop" (the excess girl), mistreated by Simone, and perceived by Paul Sanzach as a child "as if dead before she could be born," which makes her position within the family precarious. This disruption is revealed by the narrator through the discovered letters and the Áo Dài, and is also reflected in the story of Tilleul, who was sent into the military by his family.

The framing narrative begins in the present (2020), when the unnamed narrator inherits a box of letters labeled "Nancy-Saïgon" and a traditional Indochinese garment, a blue Áo Dài, found in his grandmother Simone's coffin after her cremation. This discovery marks the beginning of his detective-like search for clues in his family history. He retreats to his Paris apartment to read the correspondence between Simone and Paul Sanzach, reflecting on the gaps, lies, and unspoken truths within these documents. His aunt Édithe, Simone's first daughter and a "superfluous daughter" ("fille de trop"), is the one who provides him with these remnants of the past and contributes further fragments through her phone calls and stories. In parallel, a relationship develops with his neighbor Monsieur Trān, an old Vietnamese man whose own story and eventual death deeply affect the narrator and influence his own engagement with colonial history.

The second main storyline is the past of Simone and Paul Sanzach. Their love story begins in 1945 in Konstanz, shortly after the Second World War, amidst the ruins. They marry in Lunéville, but soon afterward, while Simone is pregnant with their daughter Édithe, Paul Sanzach is sent to Indochina as an officer. The farewell at the port of Marseille, where Paul and Simone miss each other and Simone doesn't see Paul's waving hand, is a symbolic moment of separation. An intense correspondence of letters begins between Nancy and Saïgon, which becomes the core of the novel. Simone's letters are full of longing, while Paul's replies are often evasive and full of embellishments, hinting at the growing distance and moral decay he experiences during the war. Édithe's birth is communicated to Paul only by telegram, causing him some disappointment, as he had hoped for a son. Simone's later blindness is linked to the solar eclipse she experienced as a child, symbolizing her inner darkness and the "swallowing" of her eyes by the events.

The third narrative thread focuses on Paul Sanzach's experiences in Indochina. His voyage on the former luxury liner "Pasteur" in 1949 is marked by cramped conditions, heat, seasickness, and his first encounter with colonial contempt for the indigenous population, manifested in obscene postcards and the ship's hierarchical structure. He meets Tilleul here, whom he humiliates in port. As commander of the isolated outpost Co May, nicknamed "le Hérisson" (the hedgehog), Paul is responsible for interrogations that become increasingly violent, with Tilleul present as his orderly, taking notes. Paul begins to drink to cope with reality. His relationship with Linh, a young Vietnamese woman whom he buys as a "congaï" (lover and housekeeper), highlights his moral ambiguity and the colonial power structures. For him, she is a means to numb his anxieties and compensate for the distance between him and Simone, while he ignores her inner world. A pivotal moment is the military operation "Grain de sel," in which Paul's troops attack a Viet Minh camp that turns out to be abandoned—a "mirage." The operation results in a massacre of Viet Minh soldiers and civilians, whose bodies are hastily disposed of. Paul Sanzach's life ultimately ends in an ambush in the jungle, where he is killed. Tilleul is present and brutally dismembers his body, holding Paul's genitals in his hand.

The fate of young Tilleul forms the fourth major narrative thread. A "superfluous" young man from the Jura region, sent into the army by his family because he was suspected of being homosexual, he becomes Paul Sanzach's orderly. He witnesses and is complicit in Paul's atrocities, such as the brutal interrogations and the murder of a young Vietnamese girl, whose body he buries in the hangar on Paul's orders. Tilleul himself suffers humiliation (Paul urinates on him) and seeks solace in opium. After Sanzach's death, he disappears into the jungle. Years later, he reappears a scarred man, running a bar in Vũng Tàu (formerly Cap Saint-Jacques). He speaks Vietnamese and has integrated into the local culture, but remains haunted by his past. His bitter interpretation of Nguyễn Du's poems, which he connects to the bloody reality of war, reveals the lasting scars of trauma.

Finally, there is the story of Linh, whom Paul buys as a "congaï" (a term used to describe a person of mixed race). Behind her apparent conformity and amiability, however, lies a deep alienation and a resolve to resist. She turns out to be a Viet Minh informant, spying on Paul Sanzach and the Co May post, and passing information to Sophat, who also defects to the Viet Minh. Her radiant smile is a mask of revenge and survival in a violent environment. Linh's fate ends tragically: After a failed assassination attempt on a collaborating Vietnamese canton chief, she is imprisoned in Saigon in 1949, transferred to Poulo Condore prison, and executed by the French army in 1952.

The reader's attention is primarily drawn to the narrator's detective-like investigation, as he approaches an often hidden truth through fragmentary documents. The way the family history is interwoven with colonial history opens up a historical examination of the atrocities of the Indochina War that goes beyond mere facts and illuminates the human cost of the conflict. The psychological depth of the characters, particularly Paul Sanzach's moral decay, Simone's enforced solitude, and Tilleul's trauma, is emotionally captivating.

Another element is the fragmentary narrative style and the aesthetics of the unspoken. The narrator is, as hinted at, aware that "everything played out between the lines" ("tout se jouait entre les lignes") and that the gaps in the letters and the deliberate obfuscations (Paul repeatedly says: "That's not what you imagine" – "Ce n'est pas ce qu'on imagine") play a central role. The reader is actively involved in reconstructing the events, which are often only suggested or represented symbolically. The symbolism is rich: the Áo Dài, the linden tree (Tilleul), the solar eclipse, or Simone's eye X-rays create deeper layers of meaning and hold the reader's attention. The contrast between the romantic expectations of Indochina and the brutal, sordid reality of the war, as Paul repeatedly suggests, is a recurring source of tension. Ultimately, it is also the fate of the "losers" and the forgotten, such as Linh, Tilleul, Édithe, and Monsieur Trān, who stand in the shadow of grand history, that touches the reader and prompts reflection. Their stories, often only revealed through the narrator's reading, give a voice to the anonymous victims and witnesses.

Genoudet's poetic strategy manifests itself in the fragmentary narrative style and rich symbolism. The novel, which has a non-linear, mosaic-like structure, utilizes shifting media such as letters, diary entries, and the narrator's inner monologues. Symbols like the Áo Dài, the solar eclipse, or the linden tree (Tilleul), which is both a tree and a man, imbue the text with deeper layers of meaning. The narrator wants to "write ants, their faces covered in earth, the flies with green bellies, the color of the water after the corpses have passed" ("écrire les fourmis, le visage pleine terre, les mouches au ventre vert, la couleur de l'eau après le passage des corps"), he seeks the small, overlooked details that reveal the true cruelty and absurdity of the conflict. The reference to Pierre Schoendoerffer's film "La 317e Section" and the "Log Lady" from "Twin Peaks" broadens the intertextual horizon and anchors the family history in a larger cultural context of war, mystery and the search for the unspoken.

The novel's conclusion, particularly the epilogue and the scenes in the "Ti-bar," forms a moving yet disturbing climax, condensing the central themes of forgetting, the enduring presence of the past, and the difficulty of coming to terms with the truth. The epilogue describes present-day Vũng Tàu as a place attempting to rewrite its colonial history: "Cap Saint-Jacques no longer exists today" ("Le cap Saint-Jacques, aujourd'hui, n'existe plus"). Beneath the modern buildings and the "wastelands of Vũng Tàu" ("terrains vagues de Vũng Tàu"), the old colonial era disappears "until it becomes invisible" ("s'éclipse jusqu'à en devenir invisible"). But the colonial shadows are still palpable, especially in the bars where "wandering veterans" ("vétérans en errance") spend their nights, marked by the battles and the "taste of girls" ("goût des filles"). This place, with its "contradictory attraction of capes and peninsulas" ("l'attrait contrarié des caps et des péninsules"), becomes the stage where Tilleul's story as a survivor and witness takes on new meaning.

Tilleul, the man who vanished into the wilderness and whose fate is lost in rumor, is the owner of the "Ti-bar," a marked man who speaks Vietnamese yet grapples with his past. He embodies the ambivalent role of someone who retreated to the jungle to escape war, yet was shaped by it. The walls of the "Ti-bar" are adorned with lines by Nguyễn Du, a Vietnamese poet who spoke of love, destruction, and the passage of time: "The oceans turn into mulberry fields, / A desolate sight" ("Les océans se changent en champs de mûres, / Une vue désolée"). Tilleul offers his own unflinching interpretation of these verses. For him, crushed mulberries are “like blood – as if you were dipping your hands into a body – it’s the same – believe me – that red – you don’t forget it” (“Les mûres écrasées, c’est comme du sang – comme quand t’as les mains plongées dans un corps – c’est pareil – crois-moi – ce rouge-là – ça s’oublie pas”). This raw, visceral interpretation, reminiscent of the scene in which Tilleul dismembers Paul Sanzach’s body after the explosion, reveals the enduring violence and trauma of war seared into the bodies and memories of the survivors. Tilleul, who has experienced and perpetrated suffering and brutality himself—he participated in disposing of the young girl's body in the hangar and is thus complicit—cannot separate the poetic metaphor from the physical reality of blood and destruction. He is living proof that "the dead can be content with silence" ("il n'y a que les morts qui arrivent à se satisfaire du silence"), but the survivors are condemned to carry on their stories and the violence associated with them. The final gesture of young Chương, who slams the door on the shadow of the staggering veteran in an attempt to "make him disappear once and for all" ("le faire disparaître une bonne fois pour toutes"), is a futile attempt, but one that underscores the collective yearning for repression and the futility of such efforts.

The past remains present, in the stories, the places, and the scarred faces of those who lived through it. The novel's ending is therefore not a catharsis, but a continuing exploration of the war's legacy and the question of how to live with a history that cannot be fully understood or told, yet whose echoes are still palpable.