Irène

Following the defeat of the French army in 1940, the Germans occupied France until 1944—directly in the North and via the collaborationist Vichy regime in the South. Despite dire circumstances (Némirovsky and her husband being Jewish), the author embarked upon a grand fresco of a defeated France, not so much to discern its causes or analyze its events, but to address a single question: did the war

The delicate elegance of the writing welcomes the reader from the novel’s very first pages: the prosaic, tranquil life of a provincial town, daily routines, rigid social roles, thwarted romances, predictable and mundane existence are described with such affectionate and ironic detail that one wishes the story would continue along this path, as if it were a modern, condensed edition of Marcel Prous