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Fire in the Blood by Irene Nemirovsky (view source)
Revision as of 15:27, 25 June 2013
, 15:27, 25 June 2013no edit summary
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It seems that Irène Némirovsky had been well aware of her likely fate for some time. With great presence of mind she packed a suitcase with her manuscripts and notebooks before she was arrested and spirited off to Auschwitz in July 1942. Her husband had usually typed up her drafts and until recently it was thought that all that existed of ''Fire in the Blood'' was the two pages which he'd typed. It wasn't until Olivier Philipponat and Patrick Lienhardt, who had been commissioned to write [[The Life of Irene Nemirovsky by Patrick Lienhardt, Olivier Philipponnat and Euan Cameron|a biography ]] of the author, began their researches into Némirovsky's archive that the more complete manuscript came to light. Némirovsky begun the novel in 1938 and was still reworking it when she was arrested, but nevertheless it is a remarkable piece, with little feeling of being 'work in progress'.
Sylvestre is generally known as Silvio because a beautiful woman once thought that he looked like a gondolier, but those days are long gone and he's now content to live a much quieter life in a village deep in the heart of rural France. It is, in fact, the village of Issy-l'Evêque, where Némirovsky had lived since she left Paris and many of the buildings mentioned are there today. It's tempting to wonder if Némirovsky would have changed any of this before publication, but fascinating to see the source of her inspiration.