The Prodigal Child
Description
A story of hope and inspiration that becomes torn in the hands of the cold and greedy, and of betrayal by the powerful over lesser ones.
Set in what was then contemporary Russia at the turn of the century, in a large port town on the Black Sea, The Prodigal Child is a story of a boy with a gift for composing poetry and songs—his inspiration drawn from within—who attracts the attention of a Princess. This wealthy and sophisticated woman rescues Baruch from his hard life, though it is one he also adores as a Jewish boy coming of age in his Orthodox Jewish community. But his freedom turns into a prison for him as he hopelessly falls in love with the Princess, who has no interest in the boy other than for the entertainment he provides her with his art. Falling deeper and yet with no rescue this time, he becomes ill and in his throes loses his gift, the very reason he had met the Princess in the first place. Of no use to her any longer, he is returned to his family to suffer tragic consequences.More details
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Irène Némirovsky was born in Kiev, Ukraine, in 1903 into a wealthy Jewish family. From there they moved to St. Peters-burg, Russia where she continued a life of privilege until the Bolshevik Revolution caused the family to emigrate to Fin-land, then to Sweden, and finally to France in 1919 where she immersed herself in the company of thinkers, artists, musi-cians and cultural elites as a part of the Parisian literati of her time.
Sixty-two years after her death, in 2004, Irène Némirovsky's never-before-published Suite Française, a novel of France during the German Occupation, received the prestigious Prix Renaudot, and brought international acclaim to this gifted writer whose life was tragically lost in the Holocaust. She passed from typhus in 1942 in the Auschwitz concentration camp at the age of thirty-nine, leaving behind two young daughters and an enduring legacy in literature.
