Publisher's Synopsis
This audiobook by the author of the posthumously acclaimed and bestsellingSuite Fran?aisehas never previously been published and was discovered only recently in separate archive files. A few pages were in the famous suitcase which her daughters saved, and the balance had been deposited with a very close friend during the war. A morality tale with doubtful morals, a story of murder, love and betrayal in rural France,Fire in the Blood, planned in 1937, written in 1941, is set in a small village, based on Issy-l'Ev?que whereSuite Fran?aisewas written, and brilliantly prefigures the village community in her later masterpiece.
An old man looks back on a chequered life with secret regrets, concealing a truth he will not reveal until the end.Fire in the Bloodis a small and beautiful chamber piece which starts quietly, lyrically, but then races away with revelations and narrative twists in a story about young women forced into marriages with old men, about mothers and daughters, stepmothers and stepdaughters, youthful passions and the regrets of old age, about peasant communities and the way they hide their secrets. N?mirovsky looks at her characters, both young and old, with the same clear-eyed distance and humanity as she displayed inSuite Fran?aise,unpeeling layer after layer. Atmospheric and haunting asEmbersand with the crystalline perfection of Chekhov,Fire in the Bloodis a gripping literary find.
