The first major biography of the author of Suite Française

The posthumous publication of Suite Française won Irène Némirovsky international acclaim and brought millions of readers to her work. But the story of her own life was no less dramatic and moving than her most powerful fiction.

With her family, she escaped Russia in 1919 and settled in Paris, where she met and married fellow Jewish émigré Michel Epstein. In 1929 she published her highly acclaimed and controversial novel David Golder, the first of many successful books that established her stellar reputation. But when France fell to the Nazis, her renown did her little good: without French citizenship, she was forced to seek refuge in a small Burgundy village with her husband and their two young daughters. And in July 1942 Némirovsky was arrested and deported to Auschwitz, where she died the following month.

Drawing on Némirovsky’s diaries, previously untapped archival material, and interviews, her biographers give us at once an intimate picture of her life and turbulent times and an illuminating examination of the ways in which she used the details of her remarkable life to create “some of the greatest, most humane, and incisive fiction [World War II] has produced” ( The New York Times Book Review ).

奥里维尔•菲利波纳（Olivier Philipponnat）与帕特里克•里耶纳尔（Patrick Lienhardt）曾合著《罗热•斯特凡，对历险者的探查》，这部讲述著名报人和抵抗者的传记出版于2004年，获得业界好评。2007年，两人合著的《伊莱娜•内米洛夫斯基的一生》出版，获得法国《观点》杂志传记图书奖，次年，英文版在美国出版。奥里维尔•菲利波纳写过多篇关于伊莱娜•内米洛夫斯基的研究文章，其中包括两部未发表的小说（《灵魂的主人》《血的热度》）和新版《秋之蝇》的序言。