Suite Francaise

£7.99

Irene Nemirovsky's Suite Francaise is one of the few books where the term ‘lost classic’ is genuinely applicable, a book so surrounded by the circumstances of its publication, that the wonderful text itself is all the more resonant.

In 1941, Irene Nemirovsky 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 ordinary citizens of France. Nemirovsky’s death in Auschwitz in 1942 prevented her from seeing the day, 65 years later, that the existing two sections of her planned novel sequence, Sweet Francaise, would be rediscovered and hailed by many as a masterpiece.

Set during the year that France fell to the Nazis, the novel falls into two parts. The first is an evocative description of a group of Parisians as they flee the Nazi invasion; the second follows the inhabitants of a small rural community under occupation. Suite Francaise 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 still hope.