Suite Francaise
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  • Published: 7 April 2011
  • ISBN: 9781446469149
  • Imprint: RH AudioGo
  • Format: Audio Download
  • Length: 13 hr 41 min
  • Narrator: Carole Boyd
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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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A major event - the first publication of a lost masterpiece written in 2nd WW France and telling the spellbinding story of a group of characters living under Nazi occupation.

In June 1940 France fell to the Nazis. The effects of this momentous event on the lives of ordinary Parisians and the inhabitants of a small rural community under occupation are brilliantly explored in Irène Némirovsky's gripping and heartbreaking novel. Némirovsky herself was a tragic victim of the Nazi regime but she left behind her this exceptional masterpiece. In Suite Française she conjures up a vivid cast of wonderful characters who find themselves thrown together in ways they never expected. 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: 7 April 2011
  • ISBN: 9781446469149
  • Imprint: RH AudioGo
  • Format: Audio Download
  • Length: 13 hr 41 min
  • Narrator: Carole Boyd
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