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Books

Némirovsky's love letter to the France that spurned her and killed her

A review of The Fires of Autumn, by Irène Némirovsky, translated by Sandra Smith. It's the last of Nemirovsky's wartime novels to be translated into English and is better read as a draft

15 November 2014

9:00 AM

15 November 2014

9:00 AM

The Fires of Autumn Irène Némirovsky (translated by Sandra Smith)

Chatto, pp.240, £16.99, ISBN: 9780701186609

By 1940 Irène Némirovsky, who had arrived in France at the age of 16 as a refugee from Kiev, had become a prominent and successful novelist. In March of that year she celebrated what was to be her final publication day. She was Jewish, and for French publishers under Nazi occupation she had ceased to exist as an author when the German army entered Paris.

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