As Nazi forces invaded northern France in 1940, Irène Némirovsky began to write about the men and women thrown together in circumstances beyond their control. She had completed only two novellas of her planned five-part series before she was arrested and deported to Auschwitz, where she died in 1942. These novellas, discovered 64 years later, became Suite Française. “She wrote what may be the first work of fiction about what we now call World War II,” The New York Times noted. “She also wrote, for all to read at last, some of the greatest, most humane and incisive fiction that conflict has produced.” On April 7th, Maud Mandel, professor of history and Judaic studies at Brown University, will deliver an introductory lecture on “Nemirovsky in Context: French Jewish Life Before and During Occupation.” On April 8th, Alice Kaplan, Professor of Romance Studies, Literature and History at Duke University, will deliver a lecture on “La Zone Grise: On Nemirovsky before and after Suite Française.”

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