“I like gestures and symbols,” Jean-Marie Le Pen declares, apparently for the benefit of anyone who missed this during his four decades as leader of France’s far-right Front National. His odious and at times comically self-indulgent autobiography Mémoires: Fils de la Nation certainly makes full use of them, beginning with its title, “Son of the Nation.”

Le Pen loses his father when his fishing boat is blown up by a mine off the coast of Brittany in 1942. The authorities declare him a “ward of the state.” This is a matter of huge symbolic significance to Le Pen, keen to cultivate a self-image as a providential figure, part victim, part hero, who leaves his native Brittany to make his way in the big wide world.

Adopting a self-congratulatory tone throughout, Le Pen’s memoirs offer a window into the powerful currents of resentment and authoritarianism that animated far-right activists through the upheavals of postwar France.