The reality behind the novels

‘I never knew peaceful times’, Irène Némirovsky once said, ‘I’ve always lived in anxiety and often in danger’.

‘I never knew peaceful times’, Irène Némirovsky once said, ‘I’ve always lived in anxiety and often in danger’. This comment was made during a radio interview in 1934, when the novelist, who would later write Suite Française, was in fact living through the only peaceful period of her life. She had survived the pogroms of her childhood in Kiev and the dangers of her family’s flight from St Petersburg during the October Revolution. In Paris she had gone through a difficult period of resettlement before achieving her childhood dream of becoming a celebrated French writer. In 1934 she had eight years left to live, four of which were to be overshadowed by the approach and arrival of war.

The authors of this first full biography have been able to consult Némirovsky’s working notebooks and draft manuscripts that were previously thought to have been lost, as well as the memories of her oldest daughter, Denise Epstein. The result is a far more detailed picture of her life, which provides us with the information that is essential for an understanding of her work.

Némirovsky’s mother, Fanny, was sensual, selfish, immoral and cold. She never showed her daughter any love and hired a French nanny to look after her only child. Irène grew up speaking French and dreaming of ‘the most beautiful country in the world’. Two years after Irène was born, Russia suffered military defeat at the hands of the Japanese, and the Cossacks were unleashed, in the customary manner, on the Jews of Kiev. The little girl was hidden under a bed by the family cook, who put an Orthodox cross round her neck to protect her. In four days following the pogrom the governor of Kiev issued 8,000 passports to those who chose to leave.