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Suite Francaise

By Irene Nemirovsky

(24)

| Paperback | 9780676977714

Book Description

By the early l940s, when Ukrainian-born Irène Némirovsky began working on what would become Suite Française—the first two parts of a planned five-part novel—she was already a highly successful writer living in Paris. But she was also a Jew, and in 1942 she was arrested and deporteContinue

By the early l940s, when Ukrainian-born Irène Némirovsky began working on what would become Suite Française—the first two parts of a planned five-part novel—she was already a highly successful writer living in Paris. But she was also a Jew, and in 1942 she was arrested and deported to Auschwitz: a month later she was dead at the age of thirty-nine. Two years earlier, living in a small village in central France—where she, her husband, and their two small daughters had fled in a vain attempt to elude the Nazis—she’d begun her novel, a luminous portrayal of a human drama in which she herself would become a victim. When she was arrested, she had completed two parts of the epic, the handwritten manuscripts of which were hidden in a suitcase that her daughters would take with them into hiding and eventually into freedom. Sixty-four years later, at long last, we can read Némirovsky’s literary masterpiece

The first part, “A Storm in June,” opens in the chaos of the massive 1940 exodus from Paris on the eve of the Nazi invasion during which several families and individuals are thrown together under circumstances beyond their control. They share nothing but the harsh demands of survival—some trying to maintain lives of privilege, others struggling simply to preserve their lives—but soon, all together, they will be forced to face the awful exigencies of physical and emotional displacement, and the annihilation of the world they know. In the second part, “Dolce,” we enter the increasingly complex life of a German-occupied provincial village. Coexisting uneasily with the soldiers billeted among them, the villagers—from aristocrats to shopkeepers to peasants—cope as best they can. Some choose resistance, others collaboration, and as their community is transformed by these acts, the lives of these these men and women reveal nothing less than the very essence of humanity.

Suite Française is a singularly piercing evocation—at once subtle and severe, deeply compassionate and fiercely ironic—of life and death in occupied France, and a brilliant, profoundly moving work of art.


From the Hardcover edition.

3 Reviews

  • 1 person find this helpful

    book 1 is an excellent, lyrical story of the exodus from Paris ahead of the Nazi army's invasion, following a number of different people and family groups as they leave; book 2 is an account of village life which conveys the mixed attitudes--hatred, camaraderie, love, lust, admiration, etc.-- of Fre ... (continue)

    book 1 is an excellent, lyrical story of the exodus from Paris ahead of the Nazi army's invasion, following a number of different people and family groups as they leave; book 2 is an account of village life which conveys the mixed attitudes--hatred, camaraderie, love, lust, admiration, etc.-- of French townspeople and farmers toward their German occupiers, and vice versa, with some overlap of characters from book 1. Made all the more poignant because of the author's subsequent arrest and murder in Auschwitz.

    Be sure to read the "Preface to the French Edition," which in my copy is at the end of the book. Then read the Appendix II--Nemirovsky's husband's heart-wrenching and increasingly-frantic correspondence chronicling his frustrated efforts to find and help his wife after her arrest and deportation.

    Is this helpful?

    ― Lynn said on Jan 17, 2009 about the Hardcover edition | 1 feedback

  • Just finished the first part of the book. Not as good as I thought it should be.

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    ― Cherie Hsu said on Nov 24, 2009 | Add your feedback

  • The writing may drive you a bit crazy, but the story of how this book came to be is compelling, which makes it a worthwhile read.

    Is this helpful?

    ― Bjj11 said on Oct 23, 2008 about the Hardcover edition | Add your feedback

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