The latest addition to my website is Irène Némirovsky‘s Suite française (Suite française), a novel written in 1940-41 but only published in 2004. This book is in two parts. The first part tells of a few people who live in Paris and what they do just before and just after the German invasion of France and capture of Paris in June 1940. All of them try to flee but to different parts. The Péricands, with four minor children, pack what they can and drive South to Nîmes where they have relatives whom they can stay with. The journey is difficult, as the roads are crowded, food and petrol are difficult to obtain and the Germans are attacking. They are not helped when Hubert, their seventeen-year old runs off to join the French army resisting the German invasion. Some people head off to Tours, which they find more or less abandoned, as the Germans are expected at any time. All of them have problems with transport, Germans attacking, food and petrol supplies, finding lodgings and issues with other refugees. After a while some of them return to Paris, but a very different Paris.
The second part tells the story of a small town, Bussy, after the German occupation and how the inhabitants try to adapt to their occupation. The Germans are generally fairly friendly, though they do requisition food and the soldiers are billeted on the population. Some of the French are adamantly opposed to the Germans, while others are more accommodating. Indeed, some of the French women start affairs with the German soldiers. There are the inevitable conflicts but much of the section is how both sides try to adapt to the awkward situation, with the French concerned about food and turning to the black market and outright theft to survive, while worrying about their men who are prisoners. Némmirovsky’s descriptions of these two situations are superbly done and you really feel that she was there. This book is now a classic of French literature and it makes you regret her murder by the Nazis, as she would no doubt have gone on to produce other first-class works, perhaps on the rest of the war or even Gaullist France.