the first two stories of a masterwork once thought lost written by a prewwii bestselling author who was deported to auschwitz and died before her work could be completedby the early l940s when ukrainianborn irne nmirovsky began working on what would become suite franaisethe first two parts of a planned fivepart novelshe was already a highly successful writer living in paris but she was also a jew and in 1942 she was arrested and deported to auschwitz a month later she was dead at the age of thirtynine two years earlier living in a small village in central francewhere she her husband and their two small daughters had fled in a vain attempt to elude the nazisshed begun her novel a luminous portrayal of a human drama in which she herself would become a victim when she was arrested she had completed two parts of the epic the handwritten manuscripts of which were hidden in a suitcase that her daughters would take with them into hiding and eventually into freedom sixtyfour years later at long last we can read nmirovskys literary masterpiece the first part a storm in june opens in the chaos of the massive 1940 exodus from paris on the eve of the nazi invasion during which several families and individuals are thrown together under circumstances beyond their control they share nothing but the harsh demands of survivalsome trying to maintain lives of privilege others struggling simply to preserve their livesbut soon all together they will be forced to face the awful exigencies of physical and emotional displacement and the annihilation of the world they know in the second part dolce we enter the increasingly complex life of a germanoccupied provincial village coexisting uneasily with the soldiers billeted among them the villagersfrom aristocrats to shopkeepers to peasantscope as best they can some choose resistance others collaboration and as their community is transformed by these acts the lives of these these men and women reveal nothing less than the very essence of humanitysuite franaise is a singularly piercing evocationat once subtle and severe deeply compassionate and fiercely ironicof life and death in occupied france and a brilliant profoundly moving work of art