2025 Articles

The Delacorte Review, Issue 3, Pupil of the Nation: Searching for My Father in Fascist Vichy

Courchay, Diego

Every so often, a story comes along that feels so urgent and resonant that it requires the time and space to tell fully. So it is that we are devoting this entire issue of the Delacorte Review to a single story from 2017: Pupil of the Nation, by Diego Courchay.

It is a story about fascism, as seen through the eyes of a young boy who became a true and full believer, a “pupil of the nation”—until the day came when he began to see that all that he had believed in, all that defined his world, was a lie.

CONTENTS
Prologue – 2017 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 05
Part I: The Fall . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
Part II: The Marshal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
Part III: Idyll. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93
Part IV: Debacle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119
Part V: Return . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149
Epilogue: Cicada . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163
Author Q&A . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173
Image Attributions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177