Suite Francaise

Read the lost masterpiece behind the major new film starring Kristin Scott Thomas and Michelle Williams

Set during the year that France fell to the Nazis,Suite Françaisefalls 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 Françaiseis 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.

Irène Némirovsky began writingSuite Françaisein 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.

Irène 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'Evêque (in German occupied territory). It was here that Irène began writingSuite Française. She died in Auschwitz in 1942.

Sandra Smith has translated twelve novels by Irène Némirovsky as well as a new translation of CamusThe Outsider. NémirovskysSuite Françaisewon 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 Françaiseis the first to become a film.