The Story of Suite Française . . .
And a soul-searching question for every writer
If you had no hope, would you keep writing?
This is the story of one woman’s choice.
The Suitcase
In 1941, Irène Némirovsky began work on an epic five-part novel, in which she planned to trace the unfolding war in Europe from a French perspective. Paper was scarce, so she wrote in amazingly tiny script, filling each page of her notebook from corner to corner.
Although she had lived most of her life in France, Némirovsky was Ukrainian by birth — and she was Jewish. So after Nazi Germany occupied France, the 39-year-old writer was declared a “foreign Jew,” arrested, and deported.
Within a month of being sent to Auschwitz, she was dead.
Némirovsky’s husband was deported separately, and he too died at Auschwitz. But their daughters, thirteen-year-old Denise and five-year-old Elisabeth, were cared for by a French family and survived the war. Denise managed to save a suitcase full of papers and photographs, including her mother’s thick, leather-bound notebook.
In it were the two novellas — Tempête en juin (Storm in June) and Dolce (Sweet) — which Némirovsky had been able to complete before her arrest. They were intended as the first…