The Life of Irene Nemirovsky
  • Published: 2 May 2011
  • ISBN: 9780099523987
  • Imprint: Vintage
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 496
  • RRP: $45.00
Categories:

The Life of Irene Nemirovsky

1903-1942

Formats & editions
EBook
1 Jul 2010
Paperback
2 May 2011
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A remarkable, panoramic biography of the author of Suite Française.

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Her biographers take advantage of access to diaries, unpublished documents and surviving family members to examine Irène's remarkable life, from pogroms in Ukraine to gilded holidays in Biarritz, and her troubled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.
  • Published: 2 May 2011
  • ISBN: 9780099523987
  • Imprint: Vintage
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 496
  • RRP: $45.00
Categories:

About the authors

Patrick Lienhardt

Olivier Philipponnat and Patrick Lienhardt are the authors of an acclaimed biography of Roger Stéphane. For this biography of Nemirovsky they have had unprecedented access to unpublished letters, notebooks and archives.

Olivier Philipponnat

Olivier Philipponnat and Patrick Lienhardt are the authors of acclaimed biographies of Roger Stéphane and Irène Némirovsky, for which they had unprecedented access to unpublished letters, notebooks and archives.

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

J.M. Coetzee, The New York Review of Books

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

Nicholas Shakespeare, Daily Telegraph

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

Max Hastings, Sunday Times

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

Sunday Telegraph

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

Christopher Silvester, Express

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

Caroline Moorehead, Literary Review

Painstaking biography

Patrick Marnham, Spectator

Lavish in style and high in ambition

Iain Finlayson, The Times

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

Claire Allfree, Metro

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

Nicholas Shakespeare, Daily Telegraph, Christmas round up

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

Telegraph Review

A fascinating biography

Lesley McDowell, Herald

This book is excellent

Andrew Holgate, Sunday Times

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

Maggie Armstrong, Irish Times

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

Simon Shaw, Mail on Sunday
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