The Wine of Solitude - Softcover

Némirovsky, Irène

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0701185589 ISBN 13: 9780701185589

Publisher: Chatto & Windus, 2011

Synopsis

Introspective, intense and poignant, "The Wine of Solitude" is the most autobiographical of all Irene Nemirovsky's novels, now available in English for the first time. Imbued with melancholy, and regret, it explores the troubled relationship between a young girl, her distant, self-absorbed mother and her mother's lover, Max. We follow the family through the Great War and the Russian Revolution, as the young Helene grows from a dreamy, unhappy child into an angry young woman. Through hot summers in a fictionalised Kiev (Nemirovsky's own birthplace) and the cruel winters of St Petersburg, the would-be writer Helene blossoms, despite her mother's neglect, into a clear-eyed observer of the life around her. "The Wine of Solitude" is a powerful tale not of a less of the end of innocence, than disillusionment; the story of an upbringing that produces a young woman as hard as a diamond, prepared to wreak a shattering revenge on her mother.

About this title

Review:

Praise for The Wine of Solitude

"A precocity and acuity of perception shine through."
--The New Yorker

"Wonderfully atmospheric . . . . Némirovsky evokes the places of her childhood with a sensuous clarity that shows how much she learned from Tolstoy and Proust. . . . A captivating and searingly honest portrait of the artist as a young woman."
--The Guardian (London)

"Strangely haunting . . . . Profound, exquisitely wrought. . . . A pitch-perfect evocation of adult duplicity."
--The Independent (London)

"Fiercely brave. . . . [Here is] the birth of a writer, shaped by war and revolution, told with the devastating cynicism of a young woman in a corrupt and greedy social world, where mothers openly flaunt their lovers and children are humored and ignored. . . . The characters are multidimensional."
--Shelf Awareness

"Breathtaking. . . . Némirovsky's powers of social observation, [her] implacable eye for the nuances of human conduct . . . make The Wine of Solitude so memorable."
--The Financial Times

Praise for Irène Némirovsky:

"Extraordinary. . . . Némirovsky achieve[s] her penetrating insights with Flaubertian objectivity."
--The Washington Post Book World

"Stunning. . . . [Némirovsky] wrote, for all to read at last, some of the greatest, most humane and inclusive fiction that conflict has produced."
--The New York Times Book Review

"Némirovsky's scope is like that of Tolstoy: She sees the fullness of humanity and its tenuous arrangements and manages to put them together with a tone that is affectionate, patient, and relentlessly honest."
--O: The Oprah Magazine

Book Description:

An astonishing depiction of human greed and emotion from the author of Suite Française

About this edition

• Publisher: Chatto & Windus
• Publication date: 2011
• ISBN 10: 0701185589
• ISBN 13: 9780701185589
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 256