Reading Order
Suite Française Reading Order
Irène Némirovsky's Suite Française (2004, written 1940-1942) is the novel Némirovsky never finished — she was arrested by the French police in July 1942 and died in Auschwitz six weeks later. Her daughters carried the notebook containing the manuscript for sixty years before finally transcribing and publishing it in France, where it won the Prix Renaudot (posthumously). The novel depicts the German invasion and occupation of France in two movements: 'Storm in June,' following Parisians fleeing the advancing Germans, and 'Dolce,' set in a small French village under occupation. One of the most extraordinary literary discoveries of recent decades.
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Suite Française
Complete Suite Française Book List
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Suite Française
Irène Némirovsky·2004·The two completed movements — 'Storm in June' and 'Dolce' — published posthumously in France in 2004. The novel was planned to have five movements; only these two were completed before Némirovsky's arrest and death.
Suite Française — Frequently Asked Questions
How was Suite Française discovered?
Irène Némirovsky was arrested by French police in July 1942 and deported to Auschwitz, where she died on August 19, 1942, at the age of thirty-nine. Her daughters, Denise and Élisabeth, preserved the manuscript notebook without reading it for sixty years — they believed it was a diary too painful to open. When Denise finally transcribed it in the late 1990s to donate to a Holocaust memorial archive, she discovered it was a novel. Suite Française was published in France in 2004, sixty-two years after Némirovsky's death, and won the Prix Renaudot.
What should I read next after Suite Française?
Readers continue with Némirovsky's earlier novels — David Golder (1929), her debut, and Fire in the Blood (1941). For readers who loved Suite Française's portrait of France under occupation, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, Captain Corelli's Mandolin, All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr, and The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah are natural companions. For the extraordinary backstory, David Golder and Irène Némirovsky: A Life and Her Books by Jonathan Weiss are worth exploring.
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