Suite Francaise

By the early 1920s, when Ukranian-born Irene Nemirovsky began working on what would become Suite Francaise -- the first two parts of a planned five-part novel -- she was already a highly successful writer living in Paris. But she was also a Jew, and in 1942 she was arrested and deported to Auschwitz; a month later she was dead. When she was arrested, she had completed two parts of the epic; her daughters took the manuscript with them into hiding. The first part, "A Storm in June," opens in the chaos of the massive 1940 exodus from Paris on the eve of the Nazi invasion, during which several families and individuals are thrown together under circumstances beyond their control. In the second part, "Dolce," we enter the increasingly complex life of a German-occupied provincial village. Coexisting uneasily with the soldiers billeted among them, the villagers cope as best they can. Suite Francaise is a singularly piercing evocation of life and death in occupied France, and a brilliant, profoundly moving work of art. Irene Nemirovsky (1903-1942) was born in Kiev and emigrated to France during the Russian Revolution. After attending the Sorbonne, she achieved success with her first novel, David Golder, which was followed by The Ball, The Flies of Autumn, and Dogs and Wolves. Reader Daniel Oreskes is an experienced stage actor whose film and television credits include The Thomas Crown Affiar, The Sopranos, and Law and Order. Reader Barbara Rosenblat has been named a "Voice of the Twentieth Century" by AudioFile Magazine.