It won't be in the US until September ...
Another previously undiscovered Nemirovsky novel has been unearthed. A powerful tale of love, betrayal and death in a Burgundy village, "Chaleur du Sang" - provisionally titled "Fire in the Blood" in English - was published to warm reviews here in March.
In this novel - which her biographers believe was conceived as early as 1937 though it was written at the same time as "Suite Française" - there is no suggestion of war. Rather, in the spirit of a novel by, say, Jane Austen, it dwells on intense, often repressed emotional conflict set against bucolic country life.
Its story is told by Silvio, a 50-something bachelor who has settled in the village after many years abroad. An observant loner, he watches the goings-on of his extended family, including his comely cousin Hélène; her childhood sweetheart husband, François; and their lively daughter, Colette.
Then tragedy - self-inflicted, not accidental - strikes and, with the complicity of ever-watching and ever-whispering villagers who prefer not to become involved, a cover-up follows.
What "Chaleur du Sang" and new editions of her other books, notably "Le Bal: Autumn" and "David Golder," have demonstrated is that "Suite Française" was not a solitary jewel in an otherwise ordinary literary career. Belatedly, Némirovsky has now taken her place among the small but illustrious group of foreign-born writers who have enriched French literature.
