After being readmitted to French literary heritage following the international success of Suite française (2004), Irène Némirovsky’s work provides a unique insight into the intellectual landscape of the inter-war period, particularly with regard to the crisis of the novel, the new mal du siècle and the Jewish literary renaissance. However, Angela Kershaw’s recent book on the author shows the difficulties involved in reading and understanding a book once the Holocaust has changed our perception of it.
