Unlikely Collaboration: Gertrude Stein, Bernard Fay, and the Vichy Dilemma

In 1941, the Jewish American writer and avant-garde icon Gertrude Stein embarked on one of the strangest intellectual projects of her life: translating for an American audience the speeches of Marshal Philippe P tain, head of state for the collaborationist Vichy government. From 1941 to 1943, Stein translated thirty-two of P tain's speeches, in which he outlined the Vichy policy barring Jews and other foreign elements" from the public sphere while calling for France to reconcile with Nazi occupiers. Unlikely Collaboration pursues troubling questions: Why and under what circumstances would Stein undertake this project? The answers lie in Stein's link to the man at the core of this controversy: Bernard Fa