- Summary
- "Margaret Scanlan begins with an overview of the writer's life--her upper-class Russian childhood, her family's immigration to France, her troubled relationship with her neglectful mother--and then traces how such experiences informed her novels and stories, including works set in revolutionary Russia, among the nouveau riche on the Riviera, and in struggling French families and failing businesses during the Depression. Scanlan examines the Suite Française and other works that address the rise of fascism and anti-Semitism. Viewing Némirovsky as a major talent with a distinctive style and voice, Scanlan argues for Némirovsky's keen awareness of the unsettled times in which she lived and examines the ways in which even her novels of manners analyze larger social issues. Scanlan shows how Némirovsky identified with France as the center of culture and Enlightenment values, a nation where a thoughtful artist could choose her own identity. The Russian Revolution had convinced Némirovsky that violent liberations led to further violence and repression, that interior freedom required political stability. In 1940, when French democracy had collapsed and many seemed reconciled to the Vichy state, Némirovsky's idea of private freedom faltered--a recognition that her last work, Suite Française, for all its seeming reticence, makes poignantly clear."--Provided by publisher.
- Series
- Understanding modern European and Latin American literature
Understanding modern European and Latin American literature.
- Format
- Book
- Author/Creator
- Scanlan, Margaret, 1944- author.
- Published
- Columbia, South Carolina : The University of South Carolina Press, [2018]
- Locale
- France
- Contents
-
Introduction
Monstrous mothers
The Russian fiction
David Golder, the controversy, and one "revision"
France and the Jews in the 1930s
The "bond of tears" and Jewishness in the late fiction
The "Vichy" novels
The "Catholic Némirovsky"
Dolce and the unfinished Suite Française.
- Notes
-
Includes bibliographical references (pages 159-172) and index.
Introduction -- Monstrous mothers -- The Russian fiction -- David Golder, the controversy, and one "revision" -- France and the Jews in the 1930s -- The "bond of tears" and Jewishness in the late fiction -- The "Vichy" novels -- The "Catholic Némirovsky" -- Dolce and the unfinished Suite Française.
