Suite Francaise
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  • Published: 2 April 2007
  • ISBN: 9780099488781
  • Imprint: Vintage
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 416
  • RRP: $28.99
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Suite Francaise

Formats & editions
Paperback
17 Oct 2023
Paperback
2 Apr 2007
EBook
1 Jul 2010
Audiobook
7 Apr 2011
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Already acclaimed as a classic, this is the lost masterpiece behind the major new film starring Kristin Scott Thomas and Michelle Williams

**AS FEATURED IN HRH THE DUCHESS OF CORNWALL'S BOOK CLUB, THE READING ROOM**

'A masterpiece' The Sunday Times

In 1941, Irène Némirovsky sat down to write a book that would convey the magnitude of what she was living through by evoking the domestic lives and personal trials of the ordinary citizens of France. Némirovsky's death in Auschwitz in 1942 prevented her from seeing the day, sixty-five years later, that the existing two sections of her planned novel sequence, Suite Française, would be rediscovered and hailed as a masterpiece.

Set during the year that France fell to the Nazis, Suite Française falls into two parts. The first is a brilliant depiction of a group of Parisians as they flee the Nazi invasion; the second follows the inhabitants of a small rural community under occupation. Suite Française is a novel that teems with wonderful characters struggling with the new regime. However, amidst the mess of defeat, and all the hypocrisy and compromise, there is hope. True nobility and love exist, but often in surprising places.
  • Published: 2 April 2007
  • ISBN: 9780099488781
  • Imprint: Vintage
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 416
  • RRP: $28.99
Categories:
Share…

About the author

Irène Némirovsky

Irène Némirovsky was born in Kiev in 1903, the daughter of a successful Jewish banker. In 1918 her family fled the Russian Revolution for France where she became a bestselling novelist, author of David Golder, All Our Worldly Goods, The Dogs and the Wolves and other works published in her lifetime or soon after, such as the posthumously published Suite Française and Fire in the Blood. She was prevented from publishing when the Germans occupied France and moved with her husband and two small daughters from Paris to the safety of the small village of Issy-l'Evêque (in German occupied territory). It was here that Irène began writing Suite Française. She died in Auschwitz in 1942.

portrait photo of Irène Némirovsky

Also by Irène Némirovsky

The Dogs and the Wolves
Jezebel
The Fires of Autumn
The Misunderstanding
The Wine of Solitude
Fire in the Blood
The Courilof Affair
See all

Praise for Suite Francaise

Quite outstanding, full of beauty, pain and truth

Anne Chisholm, Sunday Telegraph

A masterpiece

Sunday Times

A book of exceptional literary quality, it has the kind of intimacy found in the diary of Anne Frank

Times Literary Supplement

The work of a genuine artist

Julian Barnes, Guardian

Suite Francaise is the most powerful account of that time and place many of us have ever read...this extraordinary woman's work is receiving the celebration it deserves. I defy anyone to read it without tears of admiration and pity for its author

Max Hastings, Daily Mail

An irresistible work. Suite Francaise clutches the heart

Carmen Callil, The Times

What is to me most remarkable is the degree to which Nemirovsky, writing so close to the event, has nevertheless distilled it to extract the significance of each moment and episode. it is literature, not journalism... Her novel is in the classic French tradition, intelligent and sensuous

Scotsman

Suite Francaise is one of those rare books that demands to be read

Helen Dunmore, Guardian

Magnificent

The Times

A beautifully observed, devastating critique of French society on the brink of war

Catherine Taylor

Deftly translated by Sandra Smith, this is possibly the most devastating indictment of French manners and morals since Madame Bovary, as hypnotic as Proust at the biscuit tin, as gruelling as Genet on the prowl. Irène Nemirovsky is, on this evidence, a novelist of the very first order, perceptive to a fault and sly in her emotional restraint

Evening Standard

It is quite outstanding, full of beauty, pain and truth... We are lucky to have this book

Anne Chisholm, Sunday Telegraph

Read this haunting novel, then read [Nemirovsky’s] letters in this edition to feel the full force of the work

Fiona Wilson, The Times

An heroic attempt to write a novel about a nightmare in which the author is entirely embedded

Anita Brookner, Spectator

The facts surrounding the discovery of this book are as remarkable as its contents are magnificent... A triumph of indomitability and a masterwork of literary accomplishment

Sunday Times