Four Novels

Synopsis

Readers everywhere were introduced to the work of Irene Nemirovsky through the publication of her long-lost masterpiece, "Suite Francaise". But "Suite Francaise" was only a coda to the brief yet remarkably prolific career of this nearly forgotten, yet hugely talented novelist, who fled Russia for Paris after the Revolution and died at Auschwitz at the age of 39. Here in one volume are four of Nemirovsky's other novels - all of them newly translated by the award-winning Sandra Smith, and all, except "David Golder", available in English for the first time."David Golder" is the book that established Nemirovsky's reputation in France in 1929 when she was twenty-six. It is a novel about greed and loneliness, the story of an ageing Russian Jewish businessman, an exile in France, learning to confront death and the knowledge that wealth has not brought him happiness. "The Ball" is both a sensitive exploration of adolescence and a merciless exposure of bourgeois social pretension. "Snow in Autumn" is an evocative tale of White Russian emigres in Paris, while in "The Courilof Affair" a retired Russian revolutionary recalls an infamous assassination committed in his youth. This volume is introduced by novelist Claire Messud.