However, Michel's typing breaks off at the words 'I felt so old' (see p. 37), leaving the novel unfinished. Did Michel stop typing when Irene was arrested and deported to Auschwitz on 13 July 1942? Or perhaps even earlier in 1942, when she could no longer find a way to get her novels and short st...
It was three o’clock on a winter’s day. Night fell quickly at this time of year; lanterns were placed along the streets and they made the shops look mysterious, supernatural and a bit frightening, their little flames swaying beneath the shop signs: a rusty boot that creaked in the wind, a large g...
While they may seem remarkably polished and complete, “Storm in June” and “Dolce” were actually part of a work-in-progress. Had she survived, Irène Némirovsky would certainly have made corrections to these two books and completed the cycle she envisaged as her literary equivalent to a musical com...
Marie-Thérèse lived far away from her, in another wing of the house, separated from hers by an entire floor. She couldn’t hear the low groans that her daughter was hiding beneath her blankets. It was a calm night, without a hint of a breeze; the leaves on the palm trees barely rustled in the wind...
The markets were volatile. Money was flying from country to country the way terrified skylarks, shocked by the sound of gunfire, scatter and then return, only to fly off again immediately in all directions. One of Détang’s acquaintances – a Dutch financier – advised Renée to beware of holding too...
Harry’s mother and aunts called these little parties ‘madcap afternoons’, the term used to describe them during their youth, in their native city. Whenever they asked: ‘Would you do us the honour of coming to our madcap afternoon with your daughter on the Seventeenth?’, people found a certain exo...
From the windows of the two cars the ladies leaned out and nodded awkwardly to each other. The cars, spared from being requisitioned, were old and enormous. Each of them tried slyly to overtake and lose the other, but as soon as they were on the national highway they were forced into line, one be...
Above her long, elegant neck her face was cold, sharp, and mocking; her cheeks were flushed from dancing. Mme. Boehmer smiled with melancholy delight as she looked at her daughter and thought, yet again, “How beautiful she is … so tall … her dress is charming.”She moved aside to allow some couple...
It was autumn, at dusk, on a day that felt cold for that part of the world. “It’s like the sky in Paris…” said a woman passing by, pointing to the yellowish clouds carried along by the wind. Within a few moments, it began to rain, enhancing the darkness of the deserted street where the lamps had ...