Suite Francaise

France, 1940. Lucile Angellier’s husband has been captured as a prisoner-of-war, and all she can do is wait for him – and tend to the household controlled by her domineering mother-in-law. Their small village is soon occupied by a regiment of German soldiers, forcing the locals to coexist with an invading Nazi force. Lieutenant Bruno von Falk takes up lodgings with the Angellier women, and Lucile struggles with her growing feelings for the officer – soon a powerful love draws them together, and they too fall victim to the tragedy of war. Irene Némirovsky began writing Suite Française in 1940, but her death in Auschwitz prevented her from seeing the day, sixty-five years later, that the novel would be discovered by her daughter and hailed worldwide as a masterpiece. Irene Némirovsky was born in Kiev in 1903, the daughter of a successful Jewish banker. In 1918 her family fled the Russian Revolution for France where she became a bestselling novelist . She was prevented from publishing when the Germans occupied France and moved with her husband and two small daughters from Paris to the safety of the small village of Issy-l'Eveque (in German occupied territory). It was here that Irene began writing Suite Française. She died in Auschwitz in 1942. Sandra Smith has translated twelve novels by Irene Némirovsky as well as a new translation of Camus’ The Outsider. Némirovsky’s Suite Française won her the French American Foundation and Florence Gould Foundation Prize and The PEN Translation Prize. Five of her translations have been adapted as radio plays and broadcast on the BBC. Suite Française is the first to become a film.

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