Author:
Format: Paperback
Publisher: Random House Inc
Published: Apr 2007
Genre: Fiction - Literary
Retail Price: $18.00
Pages: 416
This remarkable bestseller, already hailed as one of the great works of French literature in the 20th century, actually consists of three books: two novellas, and the non-fiction account of their creation and improbable survival. In 1941, Irene Nemirovsky, a Jewish writer, and her husband joined their children in a French village to escape from the German occupation of Paris. By July 1942, she was arrested by French police and sent to Auschwitz; she was dead by August. In that single year, Nemirovsky accomplished a nearly impossible feat: at breakneck speed she penned two novellas about the terrible events still unfolding in France. Her two children survived the war by hiding in attics and basements, and they carried their mother's manuscript with them. It was not until the late 1990s that the eldest daughter, now in her 70s, finally read the crumbling notes and realized that they were not merely a diary, but two fully formed works of fiction, the earliest literature ever written about World War II--written while events were actually happening. The first, STORM IN JUNE is a cacophonous, frightening, and frequently comic account of the mass exodus from Paris in 1940; the second, DOLCE, tells the story of a French village living uneasily under German occupation. IIt's a miracle is that these novellas exist at all, but the greater miracle is that, amidst upheaval and danger, Nemirovsky somehow created work of such insight, richness, menace, and beauty.
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I know this book is supposed to be smart and moving, but it was boring me. Today, I got more books in the mail to read, and I am so relieved I can stop reading this one and return it. It is sad everyone losing everything in the war, but this is just written in a boring manner, im confused about all the characters even though I'm half way through, and it seemed more like a c**** to read it than fun.