Irène Némirovsky was born in Kiev in 1903. At the outbreak of the Russian Revolution, she and her family fled first to Finland and eventually to France. Her writing career was incredibly successful, with her first book, David Golder, made into a film, and nine further novels published by 1937. But when the Germans occupied France in 1940, she, her husband and her two small daughters, despite having converted to Catholicism, decided to flee Paris. Nevertheless, she was arrested on 13 July 1942 and interned in a concentration camp. She died in Auschwitz a month later.
Irène Némirovsky
Irène Némirovsky
Suite Française
©
Travel Permit
1939
©
Suitcase
Where Suite Française was found
Watch
Harriet Walter reads Suite Française
Book Extract
Denis Epstein
Daughter of Irène Némirovsky
Nazi Occupation Of Paris
1940
Watch
Harriet Walter reads Suite Française
Book Extract
Michelle Williams as Lucille Angellier
Suite Française
Boy Soldier
Inspiration for Hubert Péricand
Kristin Scott Thomas as Madame Péricand
Suite Française
David Golder
By Irène Némirovsky
©
Suite Française
Manuscript
©
Telegram
By Michel Epstein
Featured book by Irène Némirovsky
Suite Française
Set in 1940, the year France fell to Nazi occupation, Suite Francaise tells two stories, that of a group of Parisians fleeing the invasion and that of a small rural community under German occupation. But even in dire circumstances, Némirovsky sheds light on the ways in which hope and love can be found in surprising places.
Read more