Synopses & Reviews
Readers everywhere were introduced to the work of Irène Némirovsky through the publication of her long-lost masterpiece,
Suite Française. But
Suite Française was only the coda to the brief yet remarkably prolific career of this nearly forgotten, magnificent novelist. Here in one volume are four of Némirovsky's other novels all of them newly translated by the award-winning Sandra Smith, and all, except David Golder, available in English for the first time.
David Golder is the novel that established Néirovsky's reputation in France in 1929 when she was twenty-six. It is a novel about greed and loneliness, the story of a self-made business man, once wealthy, now suffering a breakdown as he nears the lonely end of his life. The Courilof Affair tells the story of a Russian revolutionary living out his last days and his recollections of his first infamous assassination. Also included are two short, gemlike novels: The Ball, a pointed exploration of adolescence and the obsession with status among the bourgeoisie, and Snow in Autumn, an evocative tale of White Russian émigrés in Paris after the Russian Revolution.
Introduced by celebrated novelist Claire Messud, this collection of four spellbinding novels offers the same storytelling mastery, powerful clarity of language, and empathic grasp of human behavior that would give shape to Suite Française.
Review
"[V]ery few readers in our day know anything about Irène Némirovsky. Though she published more than a dozen novels between 1928 and 1942, only a few were translated into English. Even in France, where Némirovsky was extremely successful...her work was out of print until recently. Certainly very few readers would still remember David Golder, her first novel and, until Suite Francaise, her greatest success." Ruth Franklin, The New Republic (read the entire New Republic review)
Synopsis
This one volume collects four of Nmirovsky's earlier novels all of them newly translated, and all, except David Golder, available in English for the first time.
Synopsis
Readers everywhere were introduced to the work of Irène Némirovsky through the publication of her long-lost masterpiece,
Suite Française. But
Suite Française was only the coda to the brief yet remarkably prolific career of this nearly forgotten, magnificent novelist. Here in one volume are four of Némirovsky's other novels all of them newly translated by the award-winning Sandra Smith, and all, except David Golder, available in English for the first time.
David Golder is the novel that established Néirovsky's reputation in France in 1929 when she was twenty-six. It is a novel about greed and loneliness, the story of a self-made business man, once wealthy, now suffering a breakdown as he nears the lonely end of his life. The Courilof Affair tells the story of a Russian revolutionary living out his last days and his recollections of his first infamous assassination. Also included are two short, gemlike novels: The Ball, a pointed exploration of adolescence and the obsession with status among the bourgeoisie, and Snow in Autumn, an evocative tale of White Russian émigrés in Paris after the Russian Revolution.
Introduced by celebrated novelist Claire Messud, this collection of four spellbinding novels offers the same storytelling mastery, powerful clarity of language, and empathic grasp of human behavior that would give shape to Suite Française.
About the Author
Irène Némirovsky was born in Kiev in 1903 into a wealthy banking family and emigrated to France during the Russian Revolution. After attending the Sorbonne in Paris she began to write and swiftly achieved success with
David Golder, which was followed by more than a dozen other books. Throughout her lifetime she published widely in French newspapers and literary journals. She died in Auschwitz in 1942. More than sixty years later,
Suite Française was published posthumously, for the first time, in 2006.
Claire Messud is the award-winning author of four works of fiction: When the World Was Steady, The Hunters, The Last Life, and, The Emperor's Children.