Audiobooks by Irene Nemirovsky

With elegant simplicity and unswerving honesty, Irene Nemirovsky chronicles the brutalizing effects of war, on three ordinary Parisian families whose lives intertwine, spanning the years between 1912 and 1941. What starts out as a glorious campaign, in 1914, full of optimistic declarations of France's greatness, soon turns to shame and cynicism as the conflict drags on. Parisians, suffering from cold and hunger, seem unable or unwilling to comprehend the horrors of the trenches. Others seeing the main chance, prospers as black market racketeers. Bernard, who had enlisted with high hopes, returns from the Western Front, hardened and disillusioned, whose one aim, as he faces the interwar years, is to make money in whatever way possible and to indulge his senses. For his childhood friend, Therese, widowed at 22, the pursuit of happiness, now seems an impossible dream.

Irene Nemirovsky (Author), Veronika Hyks (Narrator)

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Suite Francaise

By the early l940s, when Ukrainian-born Irène Némirovsky began working on what would become Suite Française, 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 at the age of thirty-nine. Two years earlier, living in a small village in central France, where she, her husband, and their two small daughters had fled in a vain attempt to elude the Nazis, shed begun her novel, a luminous portrayal of a human drama in which she herself would become a victim. When she was arrested, she had completed two parts of the epic, the handwritten manuscripts of which were hidden in a suitcase that her daughters would take with them into hiding and eventually into freedom. Sixty-four years later, at long last, we can read Némirovskys literary masterpiece 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. They share nothing but the harsh demands of survival, some trying to maintain lives of privilege, others struggling simply to preserve their lives, but soon, all together, they will be forced to face the awful exigencies of physical and emotional displacement, and the annihilation of the world they know. 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, from aristocrats to shopkeepers to peasants, cope as best they can. Some choose resistance, others collaboration, and as their community is transformed by these acts, the lives of these these men and women reveal nothing less than the very essence of humanity. Suite Française is a singularly piercing evocation, at once subtle and severe, deeply compassionate and fiercely ironic, of life and death in occupied France, and a brilliant, profoundly moving work of art.

Irene Nemirovsky (Author), Barbara Rosenblat, Daniel Oreskes (Narrator)

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Dimanche and Other Stories

A collection of never-before-translated stories by the bestselling author of Suite Fran'aise, this is a gorgeous, gemlike volume with the same attention to detail that won Ir'ne N'mirovsky so many fans. Written between 1934 and 1942, these ten stories mine the same terrain as her bestselling novels: a keen eye for the details of social class; the tensions between mothers and daughters, husbands and wives; the manners and mannerisms of the French bourgeoisie; and questions of religion and personal identity. Moving from the drawing rooms of prewar Paris to the lives of men and women in wartime France, here is the beautiful work of a writer at the height of her tragically short career. 'Ten luminous and newly translated stories by N'mirovsky, who died at Auschwitz, expose the miseries that undermine happy families'.These accomplished tales create worlds full of secrets and treacheries'.In this superlative translation, N'mirovsky's characters emerge full-fleshed, and her voice remains timeless and relevant.''Publishers Weekly (starred review) Translated by Bridget Paterson

Irene Nemirovsky (Author), Cassandra Campbell (Narrator)

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Fire in the Blood

Here is a missing piece of the remarkable posthumous legacy of Irène Némirovsky, author of the internationally acclaimed Suite Française. The novel–only now assembled in its entirety–teems with the intertwined lives of an insular French village in the years before the war, when “peace” was less important as a political state than as a coveted personal condition: the untroubled pinnacle of happiness. At the center of the tale is Silvio: in his younger years he fled the boredom of the village and made a life of travel and adventure. Now he’s returned, living in a farmer’s hovel in the middle of the woods, and, much to his family’s chagrin, perfectly content with his solitude. As his narration unfolds, we are given an intimate picture of the loves and infidelities, the scandals, the youthful ardor and regrets of age that tie Silvio to the long-guarded secrets of the past.

Irene Nemirovsky (Author), Mark Bramhall (Narrator)

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