The Dogs and the Wolves

Description

A wonderful, panoramic novel and an achingly poignant love story from the bestselling author of Suite Fran aise. From the author of the bestselling Suite Fran aise. Ada grows up motherless in the Jewish pogroms of a Ukrainian city in the early years of the twentieth century. In the same city, Harry Sinner, the cosseted son of a city financier, belongs to a very different world. Eventually, in search of a brighter future, Ada moves to Paris and makes a living painting scenes from the world she has left behind. Harry Sinner also comes to Paris to mingle in exclusive circles, until one day he buys two paintings which remind him of his past and the course of Ada's life changes once more...

Ir ne Nemirovsky was born in Kiev in 1903, the daughter of a Jewish banker. In 1918 her family fled the Russian Revolution for France where she became a bestselling novelist, author of David Golder, Le Bal, The Courilof Affair, All Our Worldly Goods and other works published in her lifetime or soon after, as well as of the recent posthumously published Suite Fran aise and Fire in the Blood. The Dogs and the Wolves, now appearing for the first time in English, was published in France in spring 1940, just months before France fell to the Nazis. Nemirovsky died in Auschwitz in 1942.

Written with tremendous assurance and finesse, The Dogs and the Wolves is an outstanding achievement of European fiction * Sunday Times * The pleasure of this fine novel lies in its depiction of a doomed love affair... Nemirovsky's exquisite descriptions of character reveal a brilliantly sharp eye * Daily Telegraph * Nemirovsky was incapable of producing anything less than an enchanting novel. She has an irresistible talent for creating character and incident which makes this story as much a page-turner as anything she has written -- Carmen Callil * Guardian * Nemirovksy is a deeply engaged observer of her characters, and her depiction of the inner lives of both Jews and Gentiles in Sandra Smith's admirable translation of this exquisitely detailed novel, has the fine, authentic ring of artistic truth * Sunday Telegraph * She elegantly uses traditional orchestration, which makes her works, for all their weighty concerns, universally accessible and stirringly romantic * Independent *