Dad was an engineer. His daughter was born in the shadow of a nuclear power station, the child of “a strong-willed, proud mother and, quite possibly, a scoundrel of a father”. That was in 1977. He specialised in nuclear generators and was helping to build the Kori nuclear power plant in South Korea, where he met her mother. But only weeks after the commissioning of the plant and the birth of his daughter, he upped and left without a trace.
The narrator turns detective 40 years later. Her father’s absence has fuelled her “inner reactor”, she notes metaphorically. And she coolly proceeds to piece together the fragmented pictures. The trail begins in Wales, where her father grew up, and continues to East Asia before ending in Monroe, Michigan. Her father worked at Monroe’s Enrico Fermi 2 reactor, which has suffered numerous mishaps over the course of its operating history, as the narrator notes sardonically.
“Generator” by Rinny Gremaud is a remarkable, critical, reflective work in which factual and biographical elements intersect. Gremaud, who was born in Korea like the narrator, is adept at describing the technical ins and outs, and consequences, of working on the construction of a nuclear power plant and, in doing so, shedding more light on the absconding father. Industrial desolation is a recurrent, emotive theme on her journey. Energy, that unrelenting force, has no regard for humans or nature. For this reason, Gremaud chooses to fictionalise her father as a means of joining the dots.
Gremaud’s novel was published in French in 2023 (center). It has since been translated into German (left) and will be available in English in January 2026 (right).
“I could have asked my mother more questions,” she writes, “but I prefer to invent everything myself.” So that “grey areas, havens, and hiding places” remain for all concerned. This allows the narrator to avoid claiming the moral high ground while maintaining an effortless grip on a story that flits between imagination and reality.
Gremaud draws on personal experience to tell the story, combining lucid analysis with humour and biting irony. Her commentary is quite caustic at times. Such venting betrays a certain vulnerability. There is a subtlety here that lends her prose its own beautiful character. The narrator finally stands at her 82-year-old father’s front door. And then turns on her heels and walks away for good. She knows all she wants to know.
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