A prolific novelist and critic, Brasillach was a witty, flamboyant product of France's prestigious Ecole Normale Superieure. He was also an anti-Semite, an acerbic opponent of French democracy, and the editor in chief of France's infamous fascist weekly Je Suis Partout. His trial and execution, carefully reconstructed in The Collaborator, remain one of the most controversial episodes in the history of twentieth -century France. In the charged days of January 1945 -- with Paris liberated but France still at war -- a monumental courtroom drama pitted a fierce government prosecutor against a florid defense lawyer for what each considered justice on both a personal and a national scale.

Paris in 1945 is also the venue for Kaplan's ethical examination of the questions raised by Brasillach's trial. Was he in fact guilty of treason? Was he condemned for his denunciations of the resistance or singled out as a suspected homosexual? Was it right that he was executed when others who were directly responsible for the murder of thousands were set free?The verdict on these momentous issues was left to four jurors from the working-class suburbs of Paris, whose stories Kaplan presents here for the first time. In recreating the trial, she also uncovers more material never before published: damaging writings by Brasillach omitted from his Complete Works, and the file that Charles de Gaulle used to reach his decision not to pardon the writer.

In its historical revelations, its beautifully wrought prose, and its rich ambiguities, The Collaborator is a superb example of what the present can offer to the understanding of the past. A detective story, a cautionary tale, and a meditation on the disturbing workings of justice and memory, The Collaborator will stand as the definitive account of Robert Brasillach's crime and punishment.