Tired of the political fracass, of the unfulfilled promises, I went looking for a treasure at the Coral Gables Public Library and VOILA I found her. The one who came back from death 62 years later. Irene Nemirowsky was born in Kiev (then Russia) in 1903 in a wealthy Jewish family. In 1918 they flew to Finland escaping the Communist revolution. From there the family went to Paris where she studied at La Sorbonne and started a career as a writer. When the Nazi occupied France Irene already married to a Jewish-French banker moved to provinces with her husband and her two small daughters to avoid detection from Gestapo. The French colaborationist police arrested her in Juky 1942 and the Germans send her to Auschwitz where she died from typhus in August 1942. Her husband had the same fate and died also in August 1942. The children's governess went hiding with the two girls: Denise and Elizabeth. One of the girl took the leather portfolio with a new novel thinking that was her mother diary and she wanted to keep something to remind always of their mother. Sixty years passed and when Denise the older sister accepted to donate the portfolio (diary) to a museum and began to type the manuscript she realized it was a novel not a diary. So in 2004 she sent it to a French Publisher. Suite francaise became a succcess. In 2006 it was translated into English and published by Alfred A. Knopf in New York.A masterpiece about the environment in France before and during German occupation. A must read one.
