Suite Francaise
Irène Némirovsky
**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.
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About Irène Némirovsky
Reviews for Suite Francaise
Sunday Times
Quite outstanding, full of beauty, pain and truth
Anne Chisholm
Sunday Telegraph
An irresistible work. Suite Francaise clutches the heart
Carmen Callil
The Times
The work of a genuine artist
Julian Barnes
Guardian
Magnificent
The Times
Suite Francaise is one of those rare books that demands to be read
Helen Dunmore
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
A book of exceptional literary quality, it has the kind of intimacy found in the diary of Anne Frank
Times Literary Supplement
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
A beautifully observed, devastating critique of French society on the brink of war
Catherine Taylor
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