Pamela Norris
The Young and the Old
Fire in the Blood
By Irène Némirovsky (Translated by Sandra Smith)
Chatto & Windus 156pp £12.99 order from our bookshop
Fire in the Blood was probably written during the two years Irène Némirovsky lived with her family in Issy-l’Evêque, a small village in southern Burgundy, before her deportation to Auschwitz in July 1942 and subsequent death from typhoid. Like Suite Française (winner of France’s prestigious Prix Renaudot in 2004), the manuscript for the novel – thirty densely written pages – was among the papers salvaged by Némirovsky’s young daughters when they fled the village after their father, too, was deported to Auschwitz. The novel, ably translated by Sandra Smith, is published in English for the first time this month.
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
'The identification of a mighty force sparkling intermittently seems to me to constitute the finest and most consistent poetic achievement of Goudie’s book.'
Candia McWilliam on @lachlangoudie's 'The Story of Scottish Art'.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/all-that-glisters
Though 'the hotel had a reputation as the area’s best, its staff were not used to looking after world leaders, so the arrival of Cuba’s new strongman, Fidel Castro, came as something of a shock.'
@dcsandbrook on @simonhallwriter's 'Ten Days in Harlem'.
http://ow.ly/I63850Bvs10
'After all, who knows what anybody is really like, or what they really think? The biographer – same as a painter of portraits – cannot help but reproduce himself to some degree.'
From the archive: Beryl Bainbridge talks to Sebastian Shakespeare.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/sebastian-shakespeare-talks-to-beryl-bainbridge