Suite Francaise

By: Irene Nemirovsky

Narrated by: Daniel Oreskes, Barbara Rosenblat

By the early 1940s, when Ukrainian-born Irène Némirovsky began working on what would become Suite Française—the first two parts of a planned five-part novel—she was already a highly successful writer living in Paris. But she was also a Jew, and in 1942 she was arrested and deported to Auschwitz: a month later she was dead at the age of thirty-nine. Two years earlier, living in a small village in central France—where she, her husband, and their two small daughters had fled in a vain attempt to elude the Nazis—she’d begun her novel, a luminous portrayal of a human drama in which she herself would become a victim. When she was arrested, she had completed two parts of the epic, the handwritten manuscripts of which were hidden in a suitcase that her daughters would take with them into hiding and eventually into freedom. Sixty-four years later, at long last, we can read Némirovsky’s literary masterpiece

The first part, “A Storm in June,” opens in the chaos of the massive 1940 exodus from Paris on the eve of the Nazi invasion during which several families and individuals are thrown together under circumstances beyond their control. They share nothing but the harsh demands of survival—some trying to maintain lives of privilege, others struggling simply to preserve their lives—but soon, all together, they will be forced to face the awful exigencies of physical and emotional displacement, and the annihilation of the world they know. In the second part, “Dolce,” we enter the increasingly complex life of a German-occupied provincial village. Coexisting uneasily with the soldiers billeted among them, the villagers—from aristocrats to shopkeepers to peasants—cope as best they can. Some choose resistance, others collaboration, and as their community is transformed by these acts, the lives of these these men and women reveal nothing less than the very essence of humanity.

Suite Française is a singularly piercing evocation—at once subtle and severe, deeply compassionate and fiercely ironic—of life and death in occupied France, and a brilliant, profoundly moving work of art.

Exquisite writing!

The best book I have ever read about the French experience in the early days of World War II. Beautifully written.

The phenomenal bravery and skill of the author

Irene Nemirovsky and her husband knew in 1940 of the mortal danger facing them as Jewish French residents in Paris. Yet her creativity and urge to narrate propelled Nemirovsky, a famous author in France and a converted Catholic, to handwrite the stories she saw around her. The characters may be fictional in whole or in part, but the fear and confusion brought by the Nazi invasion on non-Jewish citizens of France rings true. Nemirovsky died in Auschwitz not long after she wrote these two initial parts of the Suite.

Breathtaking prose

Inspiring story of respect in adverse circumstances. We are inclined to repudiate enemies, but maybe by erasing the enemies lines we could find, with time and effort, a place of mutual understanding, and just maybe we could transport into this place a new human experience.

German Occupation of France

I was sad about the story of World War Ii, but glad to know more about its history

Details of characters and settings. Inner worlds described.

I liked the details and descriptions. I liked learning the effects of the German occupation by following certain people's journies.