Irene Nemirovsky was the author
of “Suite
Française”, a volume containing 2 novels: the 1st dealing with
the flight of the Jews from Paris in 1940 (“Storm in June”), while the 2nd
deals with the early part of the Nazi occupation (“Dolce”). She was born into a
wealthy bankers’ family in Kiev in 1903. The family had to flee from Kiev
following the Bolshevik revolution, and ended up in France. This led to Irene
studying literature at the Sorbonne. In 1926, Irene married Michel Epstein,
another Russian Jewish emigrant. Her first novel, “David Golder”, was published
in 1929, when Irene Nemirovsky was 26, and it was praised by Parisian society.
Two films have been made of the novel: the 1st directed by Julien
Duvivier in 1930, and the 2nd,
“My Daughter Joy”, was directed by Gregory Ratoff (released as
“Operation X” in the US), which starred Edward G. Robinson and which also
changed the name of the title character to “George Constantin”. Irene’s 1st
novels were published under a pseudonym. Irene and Michel sent their 2
daughters away to Issy-L’Eveque, where their nanny’s parents lived, as war
loomed. In 1941, Irene and Michel rejoined their children, as laws passed by
the collaborationist Vichy regime made it impossible to work. Irene had already
been shunned by Parisian literary society, although one publisher, Albin
Michel, continued to send money to the family. Irene spent much of this time
writing, before being arrested by gendarmes. Despite appeals to the German
ambassador to Paris and Marshal Petain, the leader of Vichy France, Irene
Nemirovsky was deported to Auschwitz in 1942, where she soon died of typhus.
Irene Nemirovsky had previously converted to Roman Catholicism, but this was not
enough to save her. Irene’s daughters, Denise and Elisabeth, were saved
however, although accounts either say that they were saved by one of the
gendarmes that arrested their father, or by the fact that they reminded a
German officer of his children. This meant that Irene’s last writing was saved,
as her daughter Denise Epstein kept her final notebooks. Yet, it took years for
Denise to study the notebooks properly, as reading them had always made her too
angry. She only started to examine them fully when she had to move the
notebooks to safety following a flood in her Paris home. Denise transcribed the
notebooks over the next 20 years, which was a difficult task, as Irene had
written some passages in very small script in order to preserve what little was
left of her supply of ink. However, it was only a chance meeting with a friend
that persuaded Denise to send the book off to a publisher in 2004. “Suite
Française” was published to huge acclaim in France in 2004. This led to Irene
Nemirovsky posthumously winning the Prix Renaudot in 2004. Irene Nemirovsky
wrote 13 novels, some of which were “Le Bal” (“The Ball” 1930), “A Modern
Jezebel”, “Les Chiens et Les Loups” (“The Dogs and the Wolves”), “Le Vin de
Solitude”, “L’Affair Courilof”, “La Proie”, “Les Mouches d’automne”, and “La
Vie de Tchekhov” (“Life of Chekhov” 1946).
French
novel survives Auschwitz – Caroline Wyatt’s interview with Denise Epstein
Writing in
the Dark: The Story of Irene Nemirovsky – an excellent overview by Erin
Durant
A
Tale of Vichy France – an article about Jonathan Weiss’s biography of Irene
Nemirovsky
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