Sign up to The Irish Times Archive (1859 - 2008)My Account »

Tue 03 Mar 2007Lost in the crush of history, found in an old suitcaseIrène Némirovsky is best known for an unfinished novel, but this is just one part of her accomplished oeuvre, writes Paul O'DohertyFor 62 years, Irène Némirovsky's story was but a shadow on the vicissitudes of time, until her unfinished novel, Suite Française, which had spent six decades hibernating in a battered suitcase, was rescued from oblivion in 2004. Initialled LN (for Léon Némirovsky, her father), the suitcase carried the DNA of a family on the run: postcards, pictures, bills, letters, notes-to-self, receipts, family papers, the treasured knick-knacks of a lifetime and the items that one grasps in haste when the knock comes on the door to say it's time to flee.