Fire in the Blood - Hardcover

Némirovsky, Irène

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0701181834 ISBN 13: 9780701181833

Publisher: Chatto & Windus, 2007

Synopsis

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..

About this title

About the Authors

Irène Némirovsky 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, author of David Golder, All Our Worldly Goods, The Dogs and the Wolves and other works published in her lifetime or soon after, such as the posthumously published Suite Française and Fire in the Blood. 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'Evêque (in German occupied territory). It was here that Irène began writing Suite Française. She died in Auschwitz in 1942.

Sandra Smith is the translator of all 14 novels by Irène Némirovsky available in English, a new translation of Camus's The Outsider; and The Necklace and Other Stories: Maupassant for Modern Times, Inseparable by Simone de Beauvoir (Ecco Press, USA), among many others. Her translation of Nemirovsky's Suite Française won the French-American Florence Gould Foundation Translation Prize for Fiction, as well as the PEN Translation Prize. Her translation of But You Did Not Come Back by Marceline Loridan-Ivens won The National Jewish Book Award. She currently teaches at NYU.

From the Back Cover

Praise for SUITE FRANCAISE

Possibly the most devastating indictment of French manners and morals since Madame Bovary ... a novelist of the very first order, perceptive to a fault and sly in her emotional restraint. - Evening Standard

A magnificent work that its readers will cherish for as long as they still care about the art of fiction or the history of Europe ... Every page shines with both a ravishing delight in the surface of life, and a profound empathy for the souls of its characters, that raises it to the ranks of the Russian and French masters. - Independent

A masterpiece of French fiction. - Sunday Times

This is fiction at it's redemptive best. - Mail on Sunday

From the Inside Flap

This gem of a novel by the author of the posthumously acclaimed and bestselling Suite Française has never previously been published. A few pages were in the famous suitcase which Némirovsky's daughters saved, and the rest had been deposited with a very close friend during the war.

A morality tale with doubtful morals, a story of murder, love and betrayal in rural France, Fire in the Blood, written in 1941, is set in a small village, based on Issy-l'Evèque where Suite Française was written, and brilliantly prefigures the village community in her later masterpiece.

An old man looks back on a chequered life, concealing truths he will not reveal until the end. Fire in the Blood starts quietly, lyrically, but then races away with narrative twists and surprise revelations. A young man, newly married, is found drowned in the mill stream; an old man is more concerned about the repayment of a debt than with his young wife; a young woman asks Silvio to plead her case; no-one is quite as they seem... Young women have to marry old men, youthful passions burn and the regrets of old age simmer in this rural community where secrets are kept close and passed from one generation to the next.

Némirovsky looks at her characters, both young and old, with the same clear-eyed distance and humanity as she displayed in Suite Française, unpeeling layer after layer. Atmospheric and haunting, Fire in the Blood is a gripping literary find.

Edition details

• Publisher: Chatto & Windus
• Publication date: 2007
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0701181834
• ISBN 13: 9780701181833
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 176