BizJournals Portfolio

Portraits of the Artist

May 14 2008

Back to: The Suite Smell of Success

Irène Némirovsky
Irène Némirovsky
Irène Némirovsky with her two daughters
carte de circulation
Irène Némirovsky
Irène Némirovsky's Leather Valise
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In September, the Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York will open the exhibit Woman of Letters: Irène Némirovsky and Suite Française. Among the items that will be displayed are photographs of the writer and the original book manuscript, which remained unread for 50 years.
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Irène Némirovsky in 1938, the same year the writer was denied French citizenship.
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Némirovsky on the beach with her daughters, Denise and Elisabeth, in 1938. Decades later, Denise would discover the unpublished novel, Suite Française.
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This carte de circulation, dated December 21, 1939, allowed Némirovsky to visit her children in Issy-L’Évêque, the small town they had been evacuated to.
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Némirovsky’s original manuscript for Suite Française, which comprises the first two novellas of what was intended to be a five-part work. She wrote the book between 1940 and 1942, while living with her family in Burgundy.
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Némirovsky was arrested by the French police in July 1942, and died that summer at Auschwitz. She left behind this leather valise containing family documents and the brown leather notebook in which she had scribbled her final book.

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