TODAY! Mon @ 11am: Books and Bites

Susan Rubin Suleiman to speak on The Nemirovsky Question

Monday, January 9, 11am in the Library Assembly Room
All are welcome to attend this free program, sponsored by the Friends of the Belmont Public Library.  Refreshments will be provided.  Books will be available for purchase and signing.  The Assembly Room is handicapped accessible.

Author and Belmont resident Susan Rubin Suleiman will speak on her new book The Nemirovsky Question:  The Life, Death, and Legacy of a Jewish Writer in Twentieth-Century France at “Books and Bites” on Monday, January 9th at 11:00 AM in the Assembly Room of the Belmont Public Library.  This wide-ranging biography is a fascinating look into the life and work of French novelist Irene Nemirovsky.  Nemirovsky was born in 1903 to a Ukrainian Jewish family and emigrated with them to France in 1919.  She became a widely read and critically acclaimed author.  Nemirovsky was deported in 1942 and died in Auschwitz.  In 2004, Suite Francaise, Nemirovsky’s posthumous novel, became an international bestseller.

Informed by personal interviews with Nemirovsky’s descendants and others, as well as by extensive archival research, The Nemirovsky Question situates Nemirovsky in the literary and political climate of interwar France and recounts, for the first time, the postwar lives of her daughters.
susan-rubin-suleimanSusan Rubin Suleiman was born in Budapest and came to the United States with her parents as a child.  She is the C. Douglas Dillon Professor of the Civilization of France and professor of comparative literature at Harvard University.  Her many books include Crises of Memory and the Second World War, Risking Who One Is:  Encounters with Contemporary Art and Literature, and the memoir Budapest Diary:  In Search of the Motherbook.