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A beautiful novel with an amazing back-story

June 8th, 2007 Katharine - Sequoya

My two favorite books so far this year The Book Thief by Marcus Zusak (reviewed here) and Suite Francaise by Irene Nemirovsky have both been about World War II and the Holocaust.  No, I’m not a history buff or someone with a morbid fascination with death and destruction, I just love well written books that give us lessons about humanity and morality and these two fit that bill.

Suite Francaise is about the German occupation of France in the early 1940’s.  Though this is a book about war there are no long descriptions of battles, but rather poignant vignettes about different civilian families that are suffering.  The first section covers the lives of Parisians fleeing the city as they learn of its’ pending occupation by German troops.  The second portion of the book describes the lives of those in a small village that has been taken over by German soldiers.  Nemirovsky’s writing is amazing and for a deeper plot description of the novel please consult the New York Times book review

What makes this book even more amazing is how it came to be.  Nemirovsky was a well-known author herself when WWII started, but as a Russian born Jew she was found in her French home and deported to Auschwitz, where she later died.  Her two daughters were taken in by a family friend and hidden until the war ended and then grew up in France.  Before they were split up, one of her daughters put the papers her mother was working on in her suitcase.  Forty years later, when her daughter was able to bring herself to look at it, she discovered it was an unfinished book.  She had it published in France in 2004 and it immediately got national recognition by winning the literary award Priz Renaudot and it was soon translated into English.  The tale of how this novel came to existence is a lengthy appendix at the end of the book and supplies readers with a remarkable back-story. Make sure to put this one on your “must read” list this year.

Entry Filed under: Historical Fiction, Literary Fiction