Fascinating.

Holocaust Victim's Novel Finds a Readership at Last

PARIS, Nov. 19 - At first glance, the novel might be considered just another in the spate of new World War II books recounting stories of love and heroism and offering lessons in brutality and cowardice.

In reality, "Suite Française" by Irène Némirovsky is very different. Written in German-occupied France in 1942 shortly before its Ukrainian-born Jewish author was sent to her death in Auschwitz, it has taken 62 years to be published.

Yet what most distinguishes this two-part novel is not its long journey from scribbled notebook to France's best-sellers' list. It has been acclaimed because it is a finely made work of fiction that portrays occupied France with both severity and sympathy. It is also written with extraordinary detachment by a woman who seemed to know that her own days were numbered. This month it won the Renaudot literary prize.

A high point of France's fall literary season, "Suite Française" has already sold 120,000 copies here, while foreign rights have been sold in 20 countries. American rights were acquired by Alfred A. Knopf, which plans to publish it in English late in 2006.