Disastrous twilight

With the opening paragraph of The Dogs and the Wolves (first serialised in France in 1939 and never previously translated) Irène Némirovsky takes us to the heart of her story: the complexities of Jewish life in eastern Europe and France in the first part of the 20th century.

The Ukrainian city in which generations of the Sinner family had been born was, in the eyes of the Jews who lived there, made up of three distinct regions. It was like a medieval painting: the damned were at the bottom, trapped among the shadows and flames of Hell; the mortals were in the middle, lit by a faint, peaceful light; and at the top was the realm of the blessed.


With the opening paragraph of The Dogs and the Wolves (first serialised in France in 1939 and never previously translated) Irène Némirovsky takes us to the heart of her story: the complexities of Jewish life in eastern Europe and France in the first part of the 20th century.

There are layers of meaning in the book’s title, which is a literal translation from the French. It refers to the phrase entre chien et loup — that is dusk, the time of day when you cannot tell the difference, the time when the wandering shape in the trees may be dog or wolf, two animals which demand a very different response. In this case, the dogs and the wolves are the rich and the poor Jews who live as neighbours in the same city but never meet.

Ada, the central character, is born into a poor family whose members have two fears, pogroms and cholera. Her father, Israel Sinner, earns a living as a go-between, a man who can get anything for anyone, provided they can pay the necessary price.