Jezebel
Published on 1. July 2010
Book
Paperback/Softback
208 pages
978-0-09-952038-2 (ISBN)
Description
From the author of the bestselling Suite Francaise.
In a French courtroom, the trial of a woman is taking place. Gladys Eysenach is no longer young, but she is still beautiful, elegant, cold. She is accused of shooting dead her much-younger lover. As the witnesses take the stand and the case unfolds, Gladys relives fragments of her past: her childhood, her absent father, her marriage, her turbulent relationship with her daughter, her decline, and then the final irrevocable act. With the depth of insight and pitiless compassion we have come to expect from the author of Suite Francaise, Irene Nemirovsky shows us the soul of a desperate woman obsessed with her lost youth.
In a French courtroom, the trial of a woman is taking place. Gladys Eysenach is no longer young, but she is still beautiful, elegant, cold. She is accused of shooting dead her much-younger lover. As the witnesses take the stand and the case unfolds, Gladys relives fragments of her past: her childhood, her absent father, her marriage, her turbulent relationship with her daughter, her decline, and then the final irrevocable act. With the depth of insight and pitiless compassion we have come to expect from the author of Suite Francaise, Irene Nemirovsky shows us the soul of a desperate woman obsessed with her lost youth.
Reviews / Votes
Irene Nemirovsky is the literary discovery of the decade * Sunday Times * Slender, but engrossing, novel... Nemirovsky's subtle twist and typically jewelled prose presents the glittering enormity of Gladys, an unsympathetic but vividly realised character who dominates this tale in a fascinating portrait of paranoid self-absorption * Financial Times * Nemirovsky's tale of a woman on trial for shooting her young lover rings more contemporary bells than we might think at first -- Lesley McDowell * The Independent on Sunday * Fast-paced and highly dramatic, it offers a fascinating glimpse into an inter-war world of privilege, wealth and Darwinian social combat -- Simon Shaw * New Statesman *More details
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Publishing group
Vintage Publishing
Product notice
Paperback (UK-B)
Dimensions
Height: 198 mm
Width: 129 mm
Thickness: 13 mm
Weight
256 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-09-952038-2 (9780099520382)
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Persons
Irene Nemirovsky was born in Kiev in 1903, the daughter of a successful Jewish banker. In 1918 her family fled the Russian Revolution for France where she became a bestselling novelist, author of David Golder, Le Bal and other works published in her lifetime or soon after, as well as the posthumous Suite Francaise and Fire in the Blood. In July 1942 she was arrested by the French police and interned in Pithiviers concentration camp, and from there immediately deported to Auschwitz where she died in August 1942.