Suite Francaise by Irene Nemirovsky

By the early l940s, when Ukrainian-born Irène Némirovsky began working on what would become Suite Française she was already a highly successful writer living in Paris. But she was also a Jew, and in 1942 she was arrested and deported to Auschwitz: a month later she was dead at the age of thirty-nine. Two years earlier, living in a small village in central France—where she, her husband, and their two small daughters had fled in a vain attempt to elude the Nazis—she’d begun her novel, a luminous portrayal of a human drama in which she herself would become a victim. When she was arrested, she had completed two parts of the epic, the handwritten manuscripts of which were hidden in a suitcase that her daughters would take with them into hiding and eventually into freedom. Sixty-four years later, at long last, we can read Némirovsky’s literary masterpiece.

If the story within this book is even half as compelling as the story surrounding the book, we are in for a truly amazing experience.

For a sneak peek at what the book club descussion may look like, take a look at the New York Times Book Review for Suite Francaise - http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/09/books/review/09gray.html?ei=5088&en=efa79839c42f4089&ex=1302235200&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss&pagewanted=print.

Any early readers out there care to comment?