All Our Worldly Goods

Irene Nemirovsky

ISBN 10: 0099520443 / ISBN 13: 9780099520443

Published by Vintage Publishing, United Kingdom, London, 2009

About this Item

From the author of the bestselling Suite Francaise.Pierre and Agnes marry for love against the wishes of his parents and the family patriarch, the tyrannical industrialist Julien Hardelot, provoking a family feud which cascades down the generations. Even when war is imminent and Pierre is called up, the old man is unforgiving. Taut, evocative and beautifully paced, All Our Worldly Goods points up with heartbreaking detail and clarity how close were those two wars, how history repeated itself, tragically, shockingly.'A remarkable novel.beautifully translated. Her voice, compassionate yet always shrewd, with its sharp portrait of France at war and during the optimistic and confused Twenties and early Thirties, is always distinctive' Literary Review. The book has been read, but is in excellent condition. Pages are intact and not marred by notes or highlighting. The spine remains undamaged.

Seller Inventory # GOR001356622

Bibliographic Details

• Title: All Our Worldly Goods
• Publisher: Vintage Publishing, United Kingdom, London
• Publication Date: 2009
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0099520443
• ISBN 13: 9780099520443
• Binding: Paperback
• Condition: Very Good
• Weight: 191 grams

About this title

Synopsis

All Our Worldly Goods reads like a prequel to Suite Française, but is a perfect novel in its own right.

In haunting ways, this compelling novel prefigures Suite Française and some of the themes of Némirovsky’s great unfinished sequence of novels. All Our Worldly Goods, though, is complete, and exquisitely so — a perfect novel in its own right. First published in France in 1947, after the author’s death, it is a gripping story of family life and star-crossed lovers, set in France between 1910 and 1940.

Pierre and Agnes marry for love against the wishes of his parents and the family patriarch, the tyrannical industrialist Julien Hardelot, provoking a family feud which cascades down the generations. This is Balzac or The Forsyte Saga on a smaller, more intimate scale, the bourgeoisie observed close-up, with Némirovsky’s characteristically sly humour and clear-eyed compassion. Full of drama and heartbreak, and telling observations of the devastating effects of two wars on a small town and an industrial family, Némirovsky is at the height of her powers.

Taut, evocative and beautifully paced, the novel points out with heartbreaking detail and clarity how close those two wars were, how history repeated itself, tragically and shockingly. The story opens in the Edwardian era, on a fashionable Normandy beach and ends with a changed world under Nazi occupation.

About the Author

Irène Némirovsky was born in Kiev in 1903. In 1918 her family fled the Russian Revolution for France where she became a bestselling novelist. When the Germans occupied France she moved with her husband and daughters to the village of Issy-l’Eveque where she began writing Suite Française. She died in Auschwitz in 1942.