The Life of Irene Nemirovsky

March 29, 2010
French biographers Philipponnat and Lienhardt draw on heretofore unexamined archives to present the turbulent, tragic life of Irène Némirovsky, author of the posthumous bestseller Suite Française.
Némirovsky (1903–1942) lived through two great persecutions of the 20th century: the pogroms of her native Kiev and Odessa and, having fled Russia for France after the Russian revolution, the Holocaust. As WWII raged, with the Germans' relentless oppression of so-called “stateless people,” her conversion to Catholicismdid not save her. Némirovsky was taken to a concentration camp in the Loiret, then shipped to Auschwitz-Birkenau, where she died with Suite Française
uncompleted. This book elegantly balances her life and the work, painting a portrait (if at some distance) of a spirited young asthmatic writer, daughter, wife, and mother. Descended from cultural rather than religiously observant Jews, Némirovsky's artistic sensibility survived an early monotonous environment formed by her commercial-banker father and the scorn of her vain, spiteful mother. The authors nicely cover the French publishing industry during the high-flying days of success when Némirovsky's bestselling and controversial 1929 novel, David Golder
, was published as well as the upper-crust émigré Parisian lifestyle of the Jazz Age. 43 photos.

June 1, 2010
Discovered in a suitcase over half a century after the author's death, "Suite Franaise", Nmirovsky's novel of wartime France, thrust the Russian-born writer into the international spotlight in 2006. Escaping Soviet oppression in 1919, Nmirovsky and her family immigrated to Paris, where she grew up as a Frenchwoman, married Jewish migr Michel Epstein, and had two daughters. Her first published novel, "David Golder" (1929), caused considerable controversy over its questionable portrait of Jews and led some to accuse her of anti-Semitism. Nonetheless, it became a best seller, brought Nmirovsky much acclaim, and was made into a film. Other novels, short stories, and biographies followed, building her reputation until the Germans occupied France. In this critical biography, Philipponnat and Lienhardt draw on previously unpublished material to show the connections between Nmirovsky's life and her fiction. So immediate was her work that she was writing "Suite Franaise" almost up until the day she was transported to Auschwitz, where she died in 1942. VERDICT Exciting, carefully researched, and beautifully written, this volume will be an important addition to Nmirovsky scholarship. [Ebook ISBN 978-0-307-59356-6.]Nancy R. Ives, SUNY at Geneseo

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Starred review from April 15, 2010
When Ir'ne N'mirovskys Suite Franaise, a tale of occupied France, was published for the first time in 2004 (2006 in the U.S.), it caused a sensation and launched a literary revival. Now readers will learn the full, tragic story of this best-selling French author of Russian Jewish descent in a phenomenally well-sourced, detailed, analytical, and beautifully written biography saturated with N'mirovskys own bracing candor and penetrating insights. Personal adversity, anti-Semitism, and war forged her steely sensibility, as Philipponnat and Lienhardt reveal in their coverage of N'mirovsky as the unloved only child of a workaholic financier and a cruel, rapacious mother, and as a fiercely independent young woman in France after her family fled Russias gruesome pogroms and civil war. With her first book, a novel about a Bernie Madoff of her time, N'mirovsky, a happy new mother at 26, became a wildly controversial celebrity. Tenacious, shrewd, fearless, alluring, and gifted, she wrote unflinchingly about human failings and transcendence in nine novels and dozens of stories between 1932 and 1942. Philipponnat and Lienhardt chronicle every complex challenge, joy, and betrayal N'mirovsky faced, up to her death at Auschwitz, in this propulsive, discerning, and devastating portrait of a brilliant writer in a time of escalating horror.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2010, American Library Association.)