Fouad Houssin Houssin itibaren Dhoneke, Pakistan
I just finished reading this book. It is tragic that Nemirovsky was deported and perished in a concentration camp before she could write the other 3 parts that were to make up this 5 part suite. Nemirovsky's prose transport the reader to the beginning of the German occupation of France. What I found most interesting about the the telling of this horrific moment in history, was the actual humanisation of the German invaders. I am accustomed to Holocaust literature in which the German Nazis are generally portrayed as monsterous killing machines. However, Nemirovsky's descriptions remind readers that many of the German soldiers were young men who would have preferred to be back home and were not monsters who killed for the pleasure of it. That is not to say that she gave a positive account of the German occupation of France -- far from it. She details out how difficult it was for the French people to allow these invaders into their towns and even homes. She recounts the perils of the mass exodus from Paris shortly before the invaders arrived. Most surprisingly, her account of this period is surprisingly unskewed by her Jewish heritage.