Patrick Lienhardt

Olivier Philipponnat

Euan Cameron

An illuminating new biography, which draws heavily upon diaries and notebooks that have resurfaced in the last few years

Her biographers have performed a remarkable feat of research, collating long-lost notes and fragments

An important contribution to understanding a complex, painful but ultimately triumphant story

A memorable portrait of a strong, determined, sarcastic and humorous woman

In its respectfulness and its dense poetic asides, beautifully translated by Euan Cameron, this tremendous biography is also very French

With this detailed and empathetic biography we have a chance to discover the woman behind it ... This biography is excellent at explaining Nemirovsky's process of literary creation and her psychological wounds

Phillipponnat and Lienhardt scrupulously examine the extent to which Nemirovksy mined her own life and parental relationships for her fiction

A re-reading of Allan Massie's masterful drama about Vichy France.

The author of Suite Francaise had a life as dramatic and as tragic as her fiction

This dramatic biography recreates her tragic life and the turbulent times in which she lived...Nemirovsky is one of those rare writers whose life is every bit as interesting as her work

This is a scholarly biography of a literary paragon... It is saturated with her writings, revealing her passions, hubris, moods and anxieties, as well as her thoughts of fiction, Jewishness and mothers... Russian social history, anti-Semitism and the Vichy regime's collusion with the Nazis are handled adroitly

1903-1942

Irène Némirovsky's own life was as dramatic as any fiction. Few writers enjoy posthumous success as astonishing as hers after the international triumph of Suite Française. She was born in 1903 in Kiev to a well-off Jewish family. They fled the Russian revolution, eventually settling in France where, with the publication of David Golder in 1929 - delivered to a publisher just before the birth of her first daughter - Irène swiftly became an acclaimed and successful writer. When France fell to the Nazis, Irène and her family took refuge in a small Burgundy village, but in July 1942 she was arrested by the French police and deported to Auschwitz. Irène died a month later, aged only thirty-nine. 
 
Her biographers take advantage of access to diaries, unpublished documents and surviving family members to examine Irène's remarkable life, from pogroms in Ukraine to gilded holidays in Biarritz, and her troubled relationship with her vain, difficult mother. The result is a brilliant portrait of an exceptional writer and of a turbulent period of European history.

Olivier Philipponnat

Praise for The Life of Irene Nemirovsky

An illuminating new biography, which draws heavily upon diaries and notebooks that have resurfaced in the last few years

Her biographers have performed a remarkable feat of research, collating long-lost notes and fragments

An important contribution to understanding a complex, painful but ultimately triumphant story

An illuminating new biography, which draws heavily upon diaries and notebooks that have resurfaced in the last few years

Her biographers have performed a remarkable feat of research, collating long-lost notes and fragments

An important contribution to understanding a complex, painful but ultimately triumphant story

An illuminating new biography, which draws heavily upon diaries and notebooks that have resurfaced in the last few years

Her biographers have performed a remarkable feat of research, collating long-lost notes and fragments

An important contribution to understanding a complex, painful but ultimately triumphant story

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