Description
Book SynopsisAlthough Irene Nemirovsky was Jewish, she frequented authors and politicians on the extreme right. This biography analyzes the discrepancy between Nemirovsky's real and imagined identities, and explores a literary work that revisits in a different way Jewish identity, exile, betrayal, and the solidarity of persecuted people.
Trade Review"In Némirovsky's search to reconcile national, religious, and cultural identities, Weiss recognizes the struggle of many immigrants in France today. For this reason, more general readers may enjoy this biography as much for the fresh perspectives it bring to questions of national and cultural identity currently under debate in the Francophone world as for the insights it brings to Némirovsky's life and literature. Scholars will value the complete bibliography of her published and unpublished works, Weiss's attention to the present controversy regarding Némirovsky's anti-Semitism, and his sensitive and well informed readings of her work, including
Suite française. This critical volume provides solid evidence that Némirovsky should be included among the most important writers of twentieth-century French fiction." -- Hollie Markland Harder *
French Review *
"[An] informative work, neatly structured to bring out the dramatic and tragic fate of a woman who, as [Weiss] puts it, 'died without ever having resolved the question of where she belonged.' It is a book well worth reading." --
Australian Book Review"This short critical biography by Weiss, an expert on contemporary French literature, is a fine introduction to her work." --
Publishers Weekly"Immensely clarifying . . . As Weiss's important and prodigiously researched biography makes clear, Némirovsky was the very definition of a self-hating Jew." --
The New Republic"Jonathan Weiss's imaginative exploration of the complexities and ambiguities of this enigmatic writer are a commendable attempt to return to Irène Némirovsky some of the dignity that such reductive portraits have denied her." --
The Times Literary Supplement"[A] brief, but intensely thought-provoking biography by Jonathan Weiss." --
The San Francisco ChronicleTable of ContentsContents @toc2:Acknowledgments xx Preface xxx[TK] Introduction 1 1. From Kiev to Paris 00 2. The Promised Land 000 3. David Golder 000 4. Profession: Woman of Letters 000 5. The Writer's Craft 000 6. The Temptation of Christianity and the Persistence of Judaism 000 7. Issy-L'Eveque 000 8. "What is this country doing to me?" 000 9. "Irene gone today" 000 Conclusion 000 Notes 000 Bibiography of Irene Nemirovsky's Works 000
