Read about another novel on the list.Suite Française
by Irene Nemirovsky
Another lost novel whose story is laced with tragedy. Just before she was arrested and shipped off to Auschwitz, where she died a month later, Nemirovsky put the manuscript in a suitcase and gave it to her daughter, Denise, for safekeeping. Believing the manuscript to be a personal diary, Denise avoided reading it for three decades. Upon discovering she’d actually been holding onto a novel based on the very months leading up to her mother’s arrest, she still kept it under wraps for another 25 years. Her mother had been a famous writer in the 1930s after the publication of her first novel, David Golder. But as the war started, she was abandoned by friends and the public alike. Suite Française finally brought her back to renown with its publication in France in 2004 and subsequent English translation.
Suite Française also appears among Max Hastings's ten best books on war, David Lodge's five best books about social class, and Howard Bloch's five best books about France.
--Marshal Zeringue
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