Pamela Norris
A Financier’s Fall
David Golder
By Irène Némirovsky (Translated by Sandra Smith)
Chatto & Windus 187pp £7.99
Irène Némirovsky recently shot to fame with the posthumous publication of her unfinished novel, Suite Française (published in the UK in 2006). The circumstances of the book’s recovery attracted as much notice as its literary merits. The Jewish author had been arrested in the village where she and her family had taken refuge during the German occupation of Paris, and she died a few weeks later, in August 1942, in the infirmary at Auschwitz. The notebook manuscript of Suite Française, which she had been working on during the last months of her life, mouldered for decades in an old suitcase until discovered by her daughter.
Suite Française was not Némirovsky’s first book. During the 1930s she was one of France’s most prestigious writers, publishing ten novels before she was silenced by new laws stigmatising Jews. David Golder, her second novel, published in 1929 when she was only twenty-six, quickly established her credentials as a gifted
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
Twitter Feed
When @djbduncan notices the text for a literary jigsaw puzzle had been written by a former colleague, his head spins. A wild surmise. Are jigsaws REF-able?
Dennis Duncan - The W Factor
Dennis Duncan: The W Factor
literaryreview.co.uk
In an effort to scold drinkers, Victorian temperance societies furiously marked every drinking establishment with a red X on city maps. It was a spectacular case of propaganda backfiring.
@foxtosser explores the history of drink maps
Edward Brooke-Hitching - From Beer Street to Gin Lane
Edward Brooke-Hitching: From Beer Street to Gin Lane - Drink Maps in Victorian Britain by Kris Butler
literaryreview.co.uk
How did a workers’ insurance agent who died of tuberculosis at the age of forty become a global literary icon?
@MortenHoiJensen on Kafka's metamorphosis
Morten Høi Jensen - Paranoid Humanoid
Morten Høi Jensen: Paranoid Humanoid - Metamorphoses: In Search of Franz Kafka by Karolina Watroba; Kafka: Making o...
literaryreview.co.uk