Shadows of a Childhood: A Novel of War and Friendship - Softcover

Gille, Elisabeth

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1595583564 ISBN 13: 9781595583567

Publisher: The New Press, 2008

Synopsis

Irčne Némirovsky’s posthumous Suite Française has become a publishing phenomenon, selling more than half a million copies since its publication in 2006. As those who know it are keenly aware, Némirovsky was killed by the Nazis before she had a chance to write the last three sections of what she intended to be a five-part work. As Claire Messud wrote in Bookforum, Némirovsky’s “hope in the midst of hopelessness . . . is a rare gift.”

As they were being deported to concentration camps, Némirovsky and her husband, like so many other German Jews, sent their two young daughters, then five and seven, to live under assumed identities—in this case in a Catholic boarding school in the south of France—which enabled them to survive the war. The younger daughter, Elisabeth Gille, became a well-known French publisher, and chronicled her wartime experiences in her own novel, Shadows of a Childhood.

Originally published long before the manuscript of Suite Française was discovered, Shadows of a Childhood is now available for Némirovsky fans who want to know more about the circumstances of her death and her daughters’ survival. Gille’s haunting novel is a moving sequel to her mother’s masterpiece and an important part of an extraordinary family’s literary legacy.

About this title

From the Back Cover:

Based on Elisabeth Gille's own experiences during World War II, Shadows of a Childhood is a fictionalized account of one individual's -- and one nation's -- coming to terms with the war. Lea and Benedicte are five and seven when they are hidden together in a convent in Bordeaux in the 1940s. They become inseparable, sharing everything except the secret of their parents' disappearances. After the war, Benedicte's world reverts to normal while Lea, marked by childhood memories she cannot escape, undertakes a devastating search for the truth.

About the Author:

The daughter of Irčne Némirovsky and one of France’s leading literary editors, Elisabeth Gille (1937–1996), wrote three novels, of which Shadows of a Childhood was the first to appear in English.

About this edition

• Publisher: The New Press
• Publication date: 2008
• ISBN 10: 1595583564
• ISBN 13: 9781595583567
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 138