The Sad Truth about a Gifted Writer

Back in the summer of 2007, just a week or so before we moved to France, I was on vacation, sitting by the pool reading a copy of Irène Némirovsky's now famous novel, Suite Française.   Written in 1942,  the book had only recently been published, having languished for years as a dusty manuscript in a suitcase owned by the author's daugher Denise Epstein.  Having lost both her parents in the Holocaust, saved herself only after being hidden from the Nazis by her governess, Ms. Epstein held onto that suitcase for many years without realizing that it contained a fully realized novel about the darkest years of her family's life.

So I'm sitting there by the pool, and the guy next to me says, "You know.  That story about the manuscript being found.  I heard it's not really true.  Just a publicity stunt."  Had he been a Holocaust denier, I would have jumped down his throat right then.  But not knowing the details (or having yet read the book's afterword), I simply shrugged and turned back to my book.

So let me tell you this.  That guy -- dead wrong.  The story -- all of it from the family's escape from Russia when Irène was a teen, her rise to fame as an author in France during the 1920s, her conversion from Judaism to Catholicism in the 1930s, her fruitless attempts to become a naturalized French citizen, her husband's desperate attempts to locate her after her arrest, their subsequent deaths in Auschwitz at the hands of the Nazis, and their daughters' remarkable survival --- is true.  And if you want to know the details, get yourself to the Mémorial de la Shoah in the Marais between now and March 8 for the free exhibition:  Irène Némirovsky: Il me semble parfois que je suis étrangère.  The exhibit includes photos, letters, press clippings, videos, as well as the suitcase which Denise Epstein guarded all those years.  It's a tragic story on many levels -- personal and societal -- but well worth your time.   And if you're not in Paris, and you haven't yet read any of her works, get thee to a bookstore or a library.  In addition to Suite Française,  I can also recommend Le Bal, a slim volume set in turn of the century Paris.  The novel that was most famous in her lifetime and also made into a major motion picture, David Golder, is next on my list.