Suite Française
 | By Irene Nemirovsky, Sandra Smith Knopf, 2006, Hardcover Customer Rating: 422 reviews Recommend |
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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.
Title: Suite Française
Sales Rank: 87051 in Books
Author: Irene Nemirovsky
Creator: Sandra Smith
Publisher: Knopf, 1St Edition edition, 2006-04-11, Hardcover, 416 pages, ISBN: 1400044731
Item Dimensions: 9.48 x 6.56 x 1.36 inches, 1.71 pounds
Package Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.6 x 1.5 inches, 1.8 pounds
- Riveting
- Amazing characters, seamless connections, a total page-turner. Worth purchasing for the appendices alone. Wow. This is not the typical style of writing that one might normally expect from this time period. The child's perspective in Dolce chp. 14 was incredible. Well done. Beyond a crying shame about the author; criminal on so many levels! More reviews
- Beautiful prose creates memorable scenes
- Not only is the story of people in France during WWII compelling, but the story of the book itself and the notes left by the author make this a very special read.
The posthumous publication of Suite Francaise is as remarkable and poignant as the novel itself. Written while the author herself experienced the events, Nemirovsky recounts the turmoil… More reviews
- SUITE FRANCAISE IRENE NEMIROVSKY
- I had read the book in French, and wanted to share it with my English speaking friends. This translation is so close to the original text, restituting the style so accurately, I sometimes wonder if it is not better than the original...
And the glimpse into the horror of French 1940 internal exodus remains frightening, with all the weaknesses, the treachery....
...… More reviews
- deserves to be read
- A book containing two narratives; one fiction, one factual explaining how the fiction part came about. This is about life in France, when the Germans and Hitler were invading Paris around the 40's. It goes in depth about what the French civilians go through, from children to adults.
This book is chilling at its very best, its descriptions… More reviews
- Tragic Flaw of a Woman Trapped by War
- Perhaps the most valuable takeaway of "Suite Francaise" is Nemirovsky's account of the 1940 exodus from Paris as the Germans marched in at the beginning of WWII, and the subsequent trials and choices these French citizens faced and made. While the author set her drama in fictionalized accounts, it is obvious she herself had firsthand knowledge and experience of a city and… More reviews
- Fire in the Blood (Vintage International)
- Dimanche and Other Stories (Vintage International)
- France and the Dreyfus Affair: A Brief Documentary History (The Bedford Series in History and Culture)
- David Golder, The Ball, Snow in Autumn, The Courilof Affair (Everyman's Library (Cloth))
- De Gaulle (Life&Times)
