The investigation for "
concealment of theft
" of unpublished manuscripts of Céline, which had disappeared for 77 years and finally recovered at the end of July 2020 by the author's beneficiaries, was closed without follow-up, the Paris prosecutor's office said Thursday, confirming information from the
World
.
Read alsoExceptional discovery of Celine's unpublished manuscripts
This investigation, which had been opened in February following a complaint filed by the beneficiaries, was closed on September 21 for lack of sufficiently serious offense, said this source.
While many thought them lost forever, some 6,000 sheets were recovered at the end of July by the beneficiaries of Louis-Ferdinand Céline (1894-1961) and his widow, Lucette Destouches, who died in 2019: Me François Gibault, 89 years old, penalist and writer close to "
Madame Céline
" and Véronique Robert-Chovin, 69, who was her dance student.
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Voyage at the end of the night
:
Le Figaro
studies in 1932 “the Céline case”
The documents, stolen at the Liberation of Paris when the anti-Semitic writer and his wife had gone into exile, had been kept for 15 years by Jean-Pierre Thibaudat (a pen name).
This dramatic critic and former
Liberation
journalist
claims to have been given them by one of his readers, whose identity he has not revealed.
During the investigation, he handed over all the manuscripts to the Central Office for the Fight against Trafficking in Cultural Property (OCBC), charged by the prosecution with investigations.
These were then returned to the beneficiaries.
