Suite Francaise

The official film tie-in book published to coincide with the film of Suite Francaise.

France, 1940. In the first days of occupation, beautiful Lucile Angellier is trapped in a stifling existence with her controlling mother-in-law as they both await news of her husband, a prisoner of war. Parisian refugees start to pour into their small town, soon followed by a regiment of German soldiers who take up residence in the villagers' homes.

The locals must learn to coexist with the enemy - in their daily lives, their homes, even their hearts. Lucile tries to ignore Bruno von Falk, the handsome and refined German officer staying with them, but soon a powerful love draws them together and they too fall victim to the tragedy of war. France, 1941.

Irene Nemirovsky, a highly successful novelist living in Paris, begins working on Suite Francaise. But she is also a Jew, and in 1942 she is arrested and deported to Auschwitz, where she dies. For sixty-four years, Suite Francaise remained hidden in a suitcase, until her daughter, Denise Epstein, discovered it and had it published in 2004. It has since been translated into over 40 languages and hailed world-wide as a masterpiece.

About the Authors

Irene Nemirovsky was born in Kiev in 1903, the daughter of a successful Jewish banker. In 1918 her family fled the Russian Revolution for France where she became a bestselling novelist . She was prevented from publishing when the Germans occupied France and moved with her husband and two small daughters from Paris to the safety of the small village of Issy-l'Eveque (in German occupied territory). It was here that Irene began writing Suite Francaise. She died in Auschwitz in 1942.

Sandra Smith has translated twelve novels by Irene Nemirovsky as well as a new translation of Camus' The Outsider. Nemirovsky's Suite Francaise won her the French American Foundation and Florence Gould Foundation Prize and The PEN Translation Prize. Five of her translations have been adapted as radio plays and broadcast on the BBC. Suite Francaise is the first to become a film.