HUMANKIND’S GREATEST narratives are living, tomorrow, or if you’ll ever go back,” says breathing things, capable of transcending space and Bloom, whopointsoutthat Némirovsky’s time, conjuring universal truths, experiences and book is unique in that it was written dur-feelings. Sometimes the journeys of these stories ing the historic period it describes. “Mos t from writer to reader are as profound and moving fiction we read about World War II wa s as the stories themselves. written with the benefit of hindsight, b ut
Such is the case with Irène Némirovsky’s Suite this book is a story in which the author w as Française, penned in secret during World War II in the same position as her characters— she when the author—a popular French novel- did not know what was to come, a nd ist of her time—was ripped from her she wrote the book just as these family and home in Paris and shipped events were occurring around her.” to the death camp at Auschwitz, “There is nothing else like it in where she died at the age of 39. The French literature,” says Némirovsky book remained unread for five biographer Jonathan M. Weiss, who decades, the original handwritten praises the novel’s precise and hon-manuscript guarded closely by est description of the mass exodus Némirovsky’s daughter, Denise of Jews from Paris in 1940. Epstein, who avoided her mother’s Némirovsky’s prose is infused words for fear the experience would with an intense musicality, its in-be too painful. tended five parts— “an epic along the In 1998, Epstein arranged to do- scale of War and Peace,” says Bloom— nate her mother’s papers to a French set to mirror a symphony’s quintet of archive and finally read the volume she Irène Némirovsky movements. (Sadly, only two parts were had avoided for so many years. Instantly completed at the time of Némirovsky’s recognizing the manuscript’s artistic merits, and its death.) Notes and possible titles (Captivity, Battles unlikely survival of Auschwitz’s sweep of destruc- and Peace) for the final three sections exist, and are tion, Epstein set about transcribing her mother’s collected in Vintage-Anchor’s American paperback handwritten work, which was published in France in edition of the book.
PHOTO COUR TESY VINTAGE-ANCHOR BOOKS 2007
2004, becoming an instant bestseller. Vintage-Anchor “We’re very lucky to have this book,” says Bloom, Books, a division of Random House, acquired North who has also edited two other books by Némirovsky, American rights shortly thereafter, and has sold Fire in the Blood, published last year, and a collection nearly 1 million copies of the book stateside. of four early novels (David Golder, The Ball, Snow in
“In a sense, the publication [of Suite Française] Autumn and The Courilof Affair), published last was a perfect storm: an amazing novel combined January. “Suite Française is a gem and a testament to with a fascinating story,” says Lexy Bloom, the the power of good literature.” C
book’s American editor. “We knew we had something really special.”
Though Némirovsky was largely unknown to American readers until the 21st-century publication of Suite Française, she was a budding literary star in France in the 1920s and ’30s. Author of 15 books, a Sorbonne-educated, high-society regular, she was a Russian-born Jew who enjoyed fin de siècle Paris after her family’s immigration. However, World War II showed Némirovsky and her family—including a husband and two daughters—no mercy. When Germany raided France, Némirovsky was identified as a Jew, torn from her family and moved to Auschwitz, where she died of typhus in 1942.
Suite Française, written clandestinely in “an old, leather-bound volume lined with tiny, spidery handwriting,” according to Bloom, recalls with “stunning immediacy” and “amazing attention to detail” the chaos, fury and trauma of being shunted from champagne celebrations to certain death.
“You feel, when you read Suite Française, that you too are fleeing from Paris as the Germans invade, not knowing if you are to return home
C OSTCO HAS 50 copies
o f Irène Némirovsky’s
S uite Française to give
a way. To enter, print
y our name, mem-
bership number,
a ddress and daytime
p hone number on a
postcard or letter
a nd send it to:
I rène Némirovksy,
T he Costco Connection,
P .O. Box 34088, Seattle,
WA 98124-1088. Or send
an e-mail to giveaway@
costco.com, with
“Irène Némirovksy”
in the subject line.
No purchase is necessary. Open to legal residents of the U.S. (except Puerto Rico) who are age 18 or older at the time of entry and who are current Costco members. One entry per household. Entries must be received or postmarked by April 1, 2008. Winners will be randomly selected and notified by mail on or before May 1, 2008. The value of the prize is $14.95. Void where prohibited. Winners are responsible for all applicable federal, state and local taxes. Odds of winning depend on the number of eligible entries received. Employees of Costco or Random House and their families are not eligible.
J. Rentilly is a Los Angeles–based journalist who writes about film, music and literature for a variety of national and international publications.
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WHEN I PICK UP a book I immediately turn to any notes in the back. Had I not done that with this month’s pick, Irène Némirovsky’s Suite Française, I would not have appreciated the depth of her work. Not only did Némirovsky write a gripping story of World War II France, but she did it with the war raging outside her door. Add to that the fact that she was taken away to Auschwitz, where she died, and readers are left feeling the loss of a novel and an author’s life that both came to untimely ends. I cannot thank her daughter enough for making sure this work was published. Némirovsky’s Suite Française is available at most Costco warehouses and on costco.com.
Pennie Clark
Ianniciello
Costco Book Buyer
FRANCE FREEMAN
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