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MCC Daily Tribune Archive

Reminder: Suite Francaise Book Discussion Next Week


The Holocaust Genocide Studies Project and the MCC Libraries will be collaborating again this semester to host a book discussion group, reading Suite Française by Irène Némirovsky.

According to Booklist: “Némirovsky, a young Russian Jewish emigre, became a celebrated novelist in Paris at age 26 in 1929. She wrote eight more novels; then, even though she was certain that she wouldn't survive Germany's occupation of France, she embarked on a grandly symphonic, courageous, and scathing work about France's collaboration with the Nazis. She completed two of five planned movements before she was sent to Auschwitz, a heart-wrenching story meticulously documented in a supplemental section. As for Nemirovsky's masterpiece, it begins with the tumultuous Storm in June, in which diverse Parisians frantically evacuate Paris during the June 1940 German invasion. Nemirovsky's gift for combining the panoramic with the intimate, high emotion with stinging wit, is reminiscent of Turgenev, Babel, and Berberova. Acutely sensitive to class differences, and mordantly scornful of hypocrisy, she orchestrates a veritable carnival of cowardice, lies, larceny, and murder as a panicked populace drops all pretense of civilization. The second movement, Dolce, evokes the eye of the storm in the village of Bussy, where German officers are billeted in French homes, and life and love resume. Suite Française is a magnificent novel of the insidious devastation of occupation, and Némirovsky is brilliant and heroic, summoning up profound empathy for all, including regretful German soldiers. Everything about this transcendent novel is miraculous.” --Donna Seaman Copyright 2006 Booklist

The book discussion will be held next Monday, March 19, during College Hour (12:00 pm to 1:00 pm) in room 2-440 (4th floor of the Brighton campus library). Please join us!

If you have any questions, please contact Lori Annesi, Reference/Special Collections Librarian (HYPERLINK "mailto:lannesi@monroecc.ed"lannesi@monroecc.ed). 

Lori Annesi
Libraries
03/12/2007