David Golder, The Ball, Snow in Autumn, The Courilof Affair by Irene Nemirovsky

David Golder, The Ball, Snow in Autumn, The Courilof Affair by Irene Nemirovsky

Readers everywhere were introduced to the work of Ir ne N mirovsky through the publication of her long-lost masterpiece, Suite Fran aise. But Suite Fran aise was only the coda to the brief yet remarkably prolific career of this nearly forgotten, magnificent novelist. Here in one volume are four of N mirovsky's other novels-all of them newly translated by the award-winning Sandra Smith, and all, except DAVID GOLDER, available in English for the first time.

DAVID GOLDER is the novel that established N irovsky's reputation in France in 1929 when she was twenty-six. It is a novel about greed and lonliness, the story of a self-made business man, once wealthy, now suffering a breakdown as he nears the lonely end of his life. THE COURILOF AFAIR tells the story of a Russian revolutionary living out his last days-and his recollections of his first infamous assassination. Also included are two short, gemlike novels: THE BAL, a pointed exploration of adolescence and the obsession with status among the bourgeoisie; and SNOW IN AUTUMN, an evocative tale of White Russian migr s in Paris after the Russian Revolution.

Introduced by celebrated novelist Claire Messud, this collection of four spellbinding novels offers the same storytelling mastery, powerful clarity of language, and empathic grasp of human behavior that would give shape to Suite Fran aise.

Irene Nemirovsky (1903-1942) was from a affluent banking family in Kiev, Ukraine, and escaped to France following the Russian Revolution. She began writing after attending the Sorbonne in Paris and quickly found success with David Golder, which was followed by more than a dozen subsequent books. She was regularly published in French newspapers and literary publications throughout her life. In 1942, she perished in Auschwitz. Suite Francaise was published posthumously for the first time more than sixty years later. It went on to become a worldwide bestseller, with about a million copies sold in the United States alone.