This perfect gem of a novel by the author of the posthumously acclaimed and bestselling "Suite Francaise" has never previously been published and was discovered only recently in separate archive files. A couple of pages were in the famous suitcase which her daughters saved, and the balance had been deposited with a family friend and editor during the war. A morality tale with doubtful morals, a story of murder, love and betrayal in rural France, "Fire in the Blood", planned in 1937, written in 1941, is set in a small ...
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This perfect gem of a novel by the author of the posthumously acclaimed and bestselling "Suite Francaise" has never previously been published and was discovered only recently in separate archive files. A couple of pages were in the famous suitcase which her daughters saved, and the balance had been deposited with a family friend and editor during the war. A morality tale with doubtful morals, a story of murder, love and betrayal in rural France, "Fire in the Blood", planned in 1937, written in 1941, is set in a small village, based on Issy-l'Eveque where "Suite Francaise" was written, and brilliantly prefigures the village community in her later masterpiece.An old man looks back on a chequered life with secret regrets, concealing a truth he will not reveal until the end. "Fire in the Blood" is a small and beautiful chamber piece which starts quietly, lyrically, but then races away with revelations and narrative twists in a story about young women forced into marriages with old men, about mothers and daughters, stepmothers and stepdaughters, youthful passions and the regrets of old age, about peasant communities and the way they hide their secrets. Nemirovsky looks at her characters, both young and old, with the same clear-eyed distance and humanity as she displayed in "Suite Francaise", unpeeling layer after layer. Atmospheric and haunting as "Embers" and with the crystalline perfection of "Chekhov", "Fire in the Blood" is a gripping literary find..
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Add this copy of Fire in the Blood to cart. $11.78, new condition, Sold by TarzanCo rated 4.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Melissa, TX, UNITED STATES, published 2007 by Knopf Publishing Group.
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Seller's Description:
New in new dust jacket. The final work by the talented young author of "Suite Francaise." This copy is new and giftable. We ship daily from our humidity-controlled premises. Glued binding. Paper over boards. With dust jacket. 137 p. Audience: General/trade.
Add this copy of Fire in the Blood to cart. $18.40, new condition, Sold by Chidoc5 Rare Books rated 4.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Highland Park, IL, UNITED STATES, published 2007 by Knopf.
Looking at the short life of Irene Nemirovsky it would seem that she was in the atmosphere of Ernest Heminway and his group of writers in Paris, if she did not meet and talk with them. Her prose is simple like Hemingway's and very prosaic. She was able to publish quite a lot during the time period 1928-1937 and I hope that English translations come out for her other books. This book examines a paysan community in 1930s French rural region and their complicated but tightly bound connections in pre World War II France. It was complete before her death and smuggled out of Nazi occupied France by her husband and two girls. She was born of wealthy banking family in Kiev and left for France during the Russian revolution of 1917. She was arrested in 1942 and died at Auschwitz. It would be interesting to see where her Suite Francaise would have taken her as some reviewers have compared it to a French War and Peace. I read this book in one sitting and am confident that this lady of Jewish heritage would have become one of the world's great writers if not already so. Paysan says the translator is a tough word to translate into English. They were more than just peasants or farmers but a whole rural community. The beginning of the story leaves us unexpected for the end but it is logical considering the roles of the various characters. Suite Francaise was published for the first time in France in 2006 sixty two years after its writing and contains the same rural aristocrats as in this Fire in Blood.
