The Great Swindle is a sweeping, picaresque epic that examines the "murky virtues of remembrance" in the hollow aftermath of World War I. The story begins in the final, desperate days of the war, when the ruthless Lieutenant Henri d’Aulnay-Pradelle orchestrates a senseless skirmish, an act of treachery that binds together the fates of two subordinates: Albert Maillard, a timid former bank clerk, and Édouard Péricourt, a brilliant artist from a wealthy family. While saving Albert’s life, Édouard is hideously disfigured—becoming a gueule cassée (broken face)—and subsequently fakes his own death to avoid returning to his estranged father.
Moving from the trenches to the "glittering but dark" streets of 1920s Paris, the narrative follows the two veterans as they struggle with poverty, morphine addiction, and a society that seems to "revere its dead more than its survivors". In a cynical act of revenge against the country that abandoned them, they devise an audacious scam: selling fraudulent monuments to honor the very war heroes the nation is so eager to memorialize. Meanwhile, the villainous Pradelle launches a ghoulish swindle of his own, profiting from the exhumation and reburial of fallen soldiers in cut-rate coffins.
Lemaitre, a master of suspense, employs a dry, ironic tone to craft a "darkly comic requiem" that feels like a 19th-century novel updated with modern clinical precision. A strong discussion angle for the group is Lemaitre’s exploration of the "great swindle" of the title—whether it refers to the characters’ specific scams or the broader, abominable treatment of the ordinary soldier by a state more interested in the aesthetics of grief than the reality of its victims.
Winner of the 2013 Prix Goncourt.
The book group meets at the organizer's apartment. The directions, door code, telephone number, etc., are sent in the 7-day and 1-day reminder emails, following registration.
Two spaces are reserved for new WICE members. If no new WICE members have registered by five days prior to the meeting, those two spaces will become available to the general WICE membership.
Registration for the September meeting opens on 01 September.
