Synopses & Reviews
In 1903 Léon M-a devout terrorist-is given the responsibility by the Revolutionary Committee of publicly “liquidating” Valerian Alexandrovitch Courilof, a notoriously brutal and cold-blooded minister. Posing as his newly appointed personal physician, Léon M is made privy to the inner world of Courilof-his failing health, his troubled domestic situation and, most importantly, the tyrannical grip that the Czar himself holds over all his ministers, forcing them to obey him or suffer the most deadly punishments.
Set in Kiev and St. Petersburg, The Courilof Affair, the story of one mans inquisition during the Bolshevik Revolution, is both an elegy to a world lost and an unsparing observation of human motives and behaviour during a period of radical upheaval in European history.
About the Author
Irène Némirovsky was born in Kiev in 1903. In 1918 her family fled the Russian Revolution for France where she became a bestselling novelist, author of David Golder, Le Bal and other works published in her lifetime, as well as the posthumous Suite Française. She died in Auschwitz in 1942. The first French publication of Fire in the Blood, by the publishers who discovered and published Suite Française, is in March 2007.