Suite Francaise (Prix Renaudot)

Description: Read the lost masterpiece behind the major new film starring Kristin Scott Thomas and Michelle Williams 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 the ordinary citizens of France. Nemirovsky's death in Auschwitz in 1942 prevented her from seeing the day, sixty-five years later, that the existing two sections of her planned novel sequence, Suite Francaise, would be rediscovered and hailed as a masterpiece. Set during the year that France fell to the Nazis, Suite Francaise falls into two parts. The first is a brilliant depiction 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 hope. True nobility and love exist, but often in surprising places.

Review: "A masterpiece" * Sunday Times * "Quite outstanding, full of beauty, pain and truth" -- Anne Chisholm * Sunday Telegraph * "An irresistible work. Suite Francaise clutches the heart" -- Carmen Callil * The Times * "The work of a genuine artist" -- Julian Barnes * Guardian * "Magnificent" * The Times *



Prizes: Runner-up for Reading Group Book of the Year 2007. Short-listed for Independent Booksellers' Week Book of the Year Award: Adults' Book of the Year 2007 and British Book Awards: Book of the Year 2007.

Author Biography: Irene Nemirovsky 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, author of David Golder, Le Bal and other works published in her lifetime or soon after, as well as the posthumous Suite Francaise and Fire in the Blood. In July 1942 she was arrested by the French police and interned in Pithiviers concentration camp, and from there immediately deported to Auschwitz where she died in August 1942.

Already acclaimed as a classic, this is the lost masterpiece behind the major new film starring Kristin Scott Thomas and Michelle Williams