The Life of Irene Nemirovsky: 1903-1942 - Tapa blanda

"An illuminating new biography, which draws heavily upon diaries and notebooks that have resurfaced in the last few years" (J.M. Coetzee The New York Review of Books)

"Her biographers have performed a remarkable feat of research, collating long-lost notes and fragments" (Max Hastings Sunday Times)

"An important contribution to understanding a complex, painful but ultimately triumphant story" (Sunday Telegraph)

"A memorable portrait of a strong, determined, sarcastic and humorous woman" (Caroline Moorehead Literary Review)

"In its respectfulness and its dense poetic asides, beautifully translated by Euan Cameron, this tremendous biography is also very French" (Nicholas Shakespeare Daily Telegraph)

Irène Némirovsky's own life was as dramatic as any fiction. Few writers enjoy posthumous success as astonishing as hers after the international triumph of Suite Française. She was born in 1903 in Kiev to a well-off Jewish family. They fled the Russian revolution, eventually settling in France where, with the publication of David Golder in 1929 - delivered to a publisher just before the birth of her first daughter - Irène swiftly became an acclaimed and successful writer. When France fell to the Nazis, Irène and her family took refuge in a small Burgundy village, but in July 1942 she was arrested by the French police and deported to Auschwitz. Irène died a month later, aged only thirty-nine.

Her biographers take advantage of access to diaries, unpublished documents and surviving family members to examine Irène's remarkable life, from pogroms in Ukraine to gilded holidays in Biarritz, and her troubled relationship with her vain, difficult mother. The result is a brilliant portrait of an exceptional writer and of a turbulent period of European history.