Octopus pre-empts Kouchner’s explosive family memoir

Octopus has pre-empted Camille Kouchner’s memoir, The Familia Grande, which covers a high-profile abuse scandal and has been a runaway hit in France.

Romilly Morgan, publishing director of Brazen, bought UK and Commonwealth rights from Charlotte Seymour at Andrew Nurnberg Associates before she joined Johnson & Alcock, on behalf of Other Press. It will be published on 5th May 2022 priced at £9.99 and Brazen is planning a major literary publicity and marketing campaign, working closely with booksellers and readers. 

The book features Kouchner’s allegation of sexual abuse by political scientist Olivier Duhamel of his step-son (Kouncher's half-brother), something Duhamel later admitted after the book was serialised in France, according to French media. The book "received wall-to-wall media coverage in France and globally”, starting the viral #METOOINCESTE movement. Since its publication in January 2021 it has shifted 340,000 copies in its home country and been sold in 14 translations, according to the publisher. 

Brazen said: “The 'big family' of the book’s title is the left-leaning powerful French cultural elite that silenced and buried a decades-old corrosive family secret. The book poignantly explores the family dynamics of abuse, and the questions of guilt and shame. Camille Kouchner grapples with her own sense of responsibility for not having stopped her stepfather at the time, and for agreeing to keep silent, which her brother had requested. The Familia Grande also documents the wider prevalence of incestual abuse within French society that has allowed influential men to commit such crimes and avoid the consequences for so long.”  

French-born Kouchner "changed the law of consent in France and toppled a number of political high-profile figures in France because Macron promised publicly to go after ‘the aggressors’," Brazen said. Macron described the book as "the courage of a sister who could no longer keep quiet”.   

Kouchner commented: “Literature brings us together. In telling an intimate story, I hoped to hit on something universal.”  

Morgan commented: “The extraordinary impact of this book comes not from the traditional story of good and evil but from the conflict between earned and deserved love into which is injected the cataclysmic force of an unspeakable act.”