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The Némirovsky Question: The Life, Death, and Legacy of a Jewish Writer in Twentieth-Century France
A fascinating look into the life and work of controversial French novelist Irène Némirovsky
Irène Némirovsky succeeded in creating a brilliant career as a novelist in the 1930s, only to have her life cut a “foreign Jew” in France, she was deported in 1942 and died in Auschwitz. But her two young daughters survived, and as adults they brought their mother back to life. In 2004, Suite française , Némirovsky’s posthumous novel, became an international best seller; some critics, however, condemned her as a “self-hating Jew” whose earlier works were rife with anti-Semitic stereotypes. Informed by personal interviews with Némirovsky’s descendants and others, as well as by extensive archival research, this wide-ranging intellectual biography situates Némirovsky in the literary and political climate of interwar France and recounts, for the first time, the postwar lives of her daughters. Némirovsky's Jewish works, Suleiman argues, should be read as explorations of the conflicted identities that shaped the lives of secular Jews in twentieth-century Europe and beyond.
Irène Némirovsky succeeded in creating a brilliant career as a novelist in the 1930s, only to have her life cut a “foreign Jew” in France, she was deported in 1942 and died in Auschwitz. But her two young daughters survived, and as adults they brought their mother back to life. In 2004, Suite française , Némirovsky’s posthumous novel, became an international best seller; some critics, however, condemned her as a “self-hating Jew” whose earlier works were rife with anti-Semitic stereotypes. Informed by personal interviews with Némirovsky’s descendants and others, as well as by extensive archival research, this wide-ranging intellectual biography situates Némirovsky in the literary and political climate of interwar France and recounts, for the first time, the postwar lives of her daughters. Némirovsky's Jewish works, Suleiman argues, should be read as explorations of the conflicted identities that shaped the lives of secular Jews in twentieth-century Europe and beyond.
376 pages, Hardcover
First published November 22, 2016
3 people are currently reading
62 people want to read
About the author
Susan Rubin Suleiman
28 books5 followersSusan Rubin Suleiman is the C. Douglas Dillon Research Professor of the Civilization of France and Research Professor of Comparative Literature
She was born in Budapest and emigrated to the U.S. as a child with her parents. She obtained her B.A. from Barnard College and her Ph.D. from Harvard University, and has been on the Harvard faculty since 1981, where she is currently the C. Douglas Dillon Research Professor of the Civilization of France and Research Professor of Comparative Literature. She retired from full-time teaching in 2015.
Suleiman is the author or editor of numerous books and more than 100 articles on contemporary literature and culture, published in the U.S. and abroad. Her latest book, The Némirovsky Question, to be published by Yale University Press in fall 2016, is about the Russian-French novelist Irène Némirovsky and issues of “foreignness” in 20th-century France. Her other books include Crises of Memory and the Second World War; Authoritarian Fictions: The Ideological Novel as a Literary Genre; Subversive Intent: Gender, Politics, and the Avant-Garde, and Risking Who One Is: Encounters with Contemporary Art and Literature. She has edited and co-edited influential collective volumes, including French Global: A New Approach to Literary History and Exile and Creativity: Signposts, Travelers, Outsiders, Backward Glances.
In addition to her scholarly work, Suleiman is the author of Budapest Diary: In Search of the Motherbook, a memoir about Hungary. Her book reviews and articles have appeared in The New York Times, The Boston Globe, The American Scholar, Moment Magazine and other newspapers and magazines.
Suleiman has won many honors, including a decoration by the French Government as Officer of the Order of Academic Palms (Palmes Académiques). She has held a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Rockefeller Humanities Fellowship, and several NEH Fellowships. She has been an invited Fellow at the Collegium Budapest Institute for Advanced Study in Budapest and at the Center for Advanced Study of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters in Oslo, as well as the Texas A&M Institute for Advanced Study. During the 2009-2010 academic year, she was the invited Shapiro Senior Scholar-in-Residence at the Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. In 2015-16 she was a Faculty Fellow at the Texas A&M University Institute for Advanced Study in College Station, Texas, and in the fall of 2017 a Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study of the Central European University in Budapest. She lives in Belmont, Massachusetts.
She was born in Budapest and emigrated to the U.S. as a child with her parents. She obtained her B.A. from Barnard College and her Ph.D. from Harvard University, and has been on the Harvard faculty since 1981, where she is currently the C. Douglas Dillon Research Professor of the Civilization of France and Research Professor of Comparative Literature. She retired from full-time teaching in 2015.
Suleiman is the author or editor of numerous books and more than 100 articles on contemporary literature and culture, published in the U.S. and abroad. Her latest book, The Némirovsky Question, to be published by Yale University Press in fall 2016, is about the Russian-French novelist Irène Némirovsky and issues of “foreignness” in 20th-century France. Her other books include Crises of Memory and the Second World War; Authoritarian Fictions: The Ideological Novel as a Literary Genre; Subversive Intent: Gender, Politics, and the Avant-Garde, and Risking Who One Is: Encounters with Contemporary Art and Literature. She has edited and co-edited influential collective volumes, including French Global: A New Approach to Literary History and Exile and Creativity: Signposts, Travelers, Outsiders, Backward Glances.
In addition to her scholarly work, Suleiman is the author of Budapest Diary: In Search of the Motherbook, a memoir about Hungary. Her book reviews and articles have appeared in The New York Times, The Boston Globe, The American Scholar, Moment Magazine and other newspapers and magazines.
Suleiman has won many honors, including a decoration by the French Government as Officer of the Order of Academic Palms (Palmes Académiques). She has held a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Rockefeller Humanities Fellowship, and several NEH Fellowships. She has been an invited Fellow at the Collegium Budapest Institute for Advanced Study in Budapest and at the Center for Advanced Study of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters in Oslo, as well as the Texas A&M Institute for Advanced Study. During the 2009-2010 academic year, she was the invited Shapiro Senior Scholar-in-Residence at the Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. In 2015-16 she was a Faculty Fellow at the Texas A&M University Institute for Advanced Study in College Station, Texas, and in the fall of 2017 a Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study of the Central European University in Budapest. She lives in Belmont, Massachusetts.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
February 5, 2017
Well-researched and perceptive account of the life and work of Irene Némirovsky, which brings the story up to the present day based on interviews with her daughters and descendants. It’s easy to forget, after the runaway success of Suite Française in 2004, that Némirovsky was already an established author in France in the 1930s before her arrest, and with great insight the author examines the so-called Némirovsky question – namely Némirovsky relationship with Judaism, her own Jewish identity and her relationship and attitude to her fellow Jews. More than a simple cradle-to-grave biography, this is a very interesting and enlightening account of the writer whose life was cut so cruelly short.
December 31, 2020
4.5 étoiles
J'ai fort apprécié cette lecture. Suleiman offre une perspective très intéressante sur l'oeuvre de Némirovsky, et j'ai trouvé la plupart de ses arguments plutôt convaincants. Or, et je ne sais pas si c'est un problème propre à la traduction française du livre ou si c'est aussi le cas dans l'édition anglophone, mais l'auteure utilise des points d'exclamation assez régulièrement dans le texte, ce qui m'a vraiment dérangée. Je m'explique. Le problème, c'est que de très bons arguments se présentent alors comme s'ils ont besoin de ce renforcement parce qu'ils ne seraient pas assez convaincants par eux-mêmes, et on a alors l'impression de lire un texte quelque peu biaisé, alors que les arguments en tant que tels ne le sont pas nécessairement et présentent en réalité souvent une analyse très originale et bien soutenue de problèmes très délicats et très complexes que suscitent les livres de Némirovsky. C'est un peu dommage. Mais à part cela, c'est vraiment un livre qui vaut la peine. Je dirais peut-être de lire d'abord la biographie de Philipponnat & Lienhardt avant de plonger dans celui-ci, car ce livre se concentre sur des questions plutôt très spécifiques (le rapport de Némirovsky à la judéité, et comment lire son oeuvre post-holocauste), alors que l'autre est une biographie très détaillée qui présente la vie et l'oeuvre de Némirovsky. Le livre de Suleiman se lit plutôt comme un approfondissement, destiné à ceux et celles qui se sont déjà quelque peu familiarisé(e)s avec l'histoire de Némirovsky. En tous cas, un livre bien écrit, bien documenté, bien nuancé, et très informatif. J'ai également fort apprécié les chapitres que Suleiman dédie aux enfants et aux descendants de Némirovsky. Ce sont de très beaux chapitres. On sent bien la passion de Suleiman pour l'oeuvre et l'héritage de Némirovsky. Un livre incontournable pour tous ceux et toutes qui s'intéressent à cette femme écrivain hors du commun que fut Irène Némirovsky.
J'ai fort apprécié cette lecture. Suleiman offre une perspective très intéressante sur l'oeuvre de Némirovsky, et j'ai trouvé la plupart de ses arguments plutôt convaincants. Or, et je ne sais pas si c'est un problème propre à la traduction française du livre ou si c'est aussi le cas dans l'édition anglophone, mais l'auteure utilise des points d'exclamation assez régulièrement dans le texte, ce qui m'a vraiment dérangée. Je m'explique. Le problème, c'est que de très bons arguments se présentent alors comme s'ils ont besoin de ce renforcement parce qu'ils ne seraient pas assez convaincants par eux-mêmes, et on a alors l'impression de lire un texte quelque peu biaisé, alors que les arguments en tant que tels ne le sont pas nécessairement et présentent en réalité souvent une analyse très originale et bien soutenue de problèmes très délicats et très complexes que suscitent les livres de Némirovsky. C'est un peu dommage. Mais à part cela, c'est vraiment un livre qui vaut la peine. Je dirais peut-être de lire d'abord la biographie de Philipponnat & Lienhardt avant de plonger dans celui-ci, car ce livre se concentre sur des questions plutôt très spécifiques (le rapport de Némirovsky à la judéité, et comment lire son oeuvre post-holocauste), alors que l'autre est une biographie très détaillée qui présente la vie et l'oeuvre de Némirovsky. Le livre de Suleiman se lit plutôt comme un approfondissement, destiné à ceux et celles qui se sont déjà quelque peu familiarisé(e)s avec l'histoire de Némirovsky. En tous cas, un livre bien écrit, bien documenté, bien nuancé, et très informatif. J'ai également fort apprécié les chapitres que Suleiman dédie aux enfants et aux descendants de Némirovsky. Ce sont de très beaux chapitres. On sent bien la passion de Suleiman pour l'oeuvre et l'héritage de Némirovsky. Un livre incontournable pour tous ceux et toutes qui s'intéressent à cette femme écrivain hors du commun que fut Irène Némirovsky.
December 29, 2016
It is difficult to explain my love of Némirovsky's books. In some ways they are a bit old fashioned, but in other significant ways they are an important part of French twentieth-century literature. Most people who have read her consider "Suite Française" to be a masterpiece, but all of her books are splendid. This book explains much of the never-ending controversy surrounding issues of self-identity and her Jewish background. However, there is no question that Némirovsky was a great writer.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews