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 . 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'Eveque (in German occupied territory). It was here that Irene began writing Suite Francaise. She died in Auschwitz in 1942. INTRODUCER BIOGRAPHY: Novelist Claire Messud is the award-winning author of When the World Was Steady, The Hunters, The Last Life and, most recently, The Emperor's Children.
The work of a genuine artist -- Julian Barnes Nemirovsky has a great gift for describing the ordinariness that surrounds catastrophes... it is this ability to conjure up people, in all their moods and foibles, their selflessness or vanity, that makes Suite Francaise so remarkable * Literary Review *