suite francaise

SUITE FRANCAISE

Auteur : Irène Nemirovsky
Editeur : Gallimard
Collection : FOLIO
Genre : ROMAN CONTEMPORAIN
Paru en : mars 2006
Nombre de pages : 574
Reliure : broché

Ecrit dans le feu de l'Histoire, Suite française dépeint presque en direct l'Exode de juin 1940, qui brassa dans un désordre tragique des familles françaises de toute sorte, des plus huppées aux plus modestes.

Avec bonheur, Irène Némirovsky traque les innombrables petites lâchetés et les fragiles élans de solidarité d'une population en déroute. Cocottes larguées par leur amant, grands bourgeois dégoûtés par la populace, blessés abandonnés dans des fermes engorgent les routes de France bombardées au hasard...

Peu à peu l'ennemi prend possession d'un pays inerte et apeuré. Comme tant d'autres, le village de Bussy est pays alors contraint d'accueillir des troupes allemandes. Exacerbées par la présence de l'occupant, les tensions sociales et frustrations des habitants se réveillent...

Roman bouleversant, intimiste, implacable, dévoilant avec une extraordinaire lucidité l'âme de chaque Français pendant l'Occupation (enrichi des notes et de la correspondance d'Irène Némirovsky), Suite française ressuscite d'une plume brillante et intuitive un pan à vif de notre mémoire.

This extraordinary work of fiction about the German occupation of France is embedded in a real story as gripping and complex as the invented one. Composed in 1941-42 by an accomplished writer who had published several well-received novels, Suite Française, her last work, was written under the tremendous pressure of a constant danger that was to catch up with her and kill her before she had finished.

Irène Némirovsky was a Jewish, Russian immigrant from a wealthy family who had fled the Bolsheviks as a teenager. She spent her adult life in France, wrote in French but preserved the detachment and cool distance of the outsider. She and her husband were deported to Auschwitz in 1942, where he was gassed upon arrival and she died in the infirmary at the age of 39. Her manuscript, in minuscule and barely readable handwriting, was preserved by her daughters, who, ignorant of the fact that these notebooks contained a full-fledged masterpiece, left it unread until 60 years later. Once published, with an appendix that illuminates the circumstances of its origin and the author's plan for its completion, it quickly became a bestseller in France. It is hard to imagine a reader who will not be wholly engrossed and moved by this book.