Irène Némirovsky

Irène Némirovsky was a novelist of Ukrainian Jewish origin who was born in Kiev, then in the Russian Empire. She lived more than half her life in France and wrote in French, but was denied French nationality. Arrested as a Jew under the racial laws – which did not take into account her conversion to Roman Catholicism – she died in Auschwitz at the age of 39. Némirovsky is best known for the posthumously published Suite française.