Tuesday, October 21, 2008

Irène Némirovsky


The New York Times reviews a new exhibit at the Museum of Jewish Heritage about Irène Némirovsky, French author and victim of the death camp Auschwitz. The remarkable story of her daughters' survival and the concomitant survival of her unpublished manuscripts is well known by now. The reviewer, however, is more concerned with the low-key discussion of her attitudes toward her Jewish heritage. Her family's complicated cross-border, cross-class, cross-cultural,political and religious conversion make for a very uncomfortable story with no easy answers or opinions. There is also an interesting, sympathetic review in the FT Weekend of her newly published book (in English) All Our Worldly Goods.