I just finished re-reading “Suite Francaise” by Irene Nemerovsky. The book was written by Irene in 1941 and early 1942, while she was living in France, under German occupation.

If now was then and technology was available, Irene would have been a blogger or embedded journalist. She captured daily life around her, but presented it as fiction. Why? She was an ex-pat Russian Jew, living in a country that was rather confused about its allegiances. France, like most of the ‘civilized’ world in 1942, suffered from anti-Semitism. The difference, however, between other countries and France was the German occupation of the country.

When orders were given to round up Jews and hold them pending deportation, there was little understanding of what was happening to those deportees. The book’s Appendix includes letters from Irene’s husband to her publisher. The letters begin with a hesitant tone (gee, I hate to bother you, but…) expressing concern about her incarceration. Since Irene had asthma, her husband was concerned about her health. His later letters grew increasingly anxious. He was right to be concerned: within 3 months of her move to Auschwitz, Nemerovsky was dead from typhus. Shortly after revealing his Jewish heritage to authorities (as part of his plea to have his wife’s case ‘reviewed’ because of her fame as a writer), her husband was also deported and was immediately sent to the gas chamber at the same concentration camp where Irene perished. Their two young daughters became war orphans in 1942, ending up being raised by their Nanny and her family in a country village. Her elder daughter kept the suitcase containing the manuscript, as the last vestige of her mother’s belongings. It wasn’t until the middle of the first decade of the 21st century that she forced herself to look at the contents of the suitcase. Where she’d expected a diary, she found the material that became Suite Francaise.

So given this as background:

First question posed: does the background of the author make a difference in terms of the likelihood of the book’s seeing publication?