The Courilof Affair by Iréne Némirovsky (1933, translated by Sandra Smith)

I offer my great thanks to Max u for providing me with a gift card that allowed me to read this book

My Posts on Iréne Némirovsky 

Like most of her readers, my literary love affair with Iréne Némirovsky began when I read her acknowledged by all master work Suite Francaise.  I then read her most autobiographical novel, The Wine of Solitude.  Next I read her very interesting David Golder centering on a White Russian family living in Paris.  From there I moved on to a very fun and wickedly funny novella about a teenage girl's revenge on her mother (Iréne Némirovsky did have "mother issues"), The Ball.

Today I will talk briefly on her novel The Courilof Affair.  It is the story of a pre-Russian revolutionionary terrorist who in 1903 participated in the murder of a Czarist official.  He is telling his story in a Cafe in Nice.    The Courilof Affair almost feels like a work that Joseph Conrad could have written.  One of the great strengths of Némirovsky is that she can show how good and evil struggle for mastery in her characters.  We feel sympathy for the murderous lead character and we see the strengths and weakness that lead him to be an Ancient Mariner old at fifty telling his story over and over.

The novel goes into lots of interesting details about life in Russia in 1903.  As I read on it is hard to see how the murder of this official will help anyone.  It was fascinating to see Némirovsky depiction of the importance of female terrorists to the anti-Czarist cause.  

The Courilof Affair is very much worth reading.  Those who know her only through her Suite Francaise will be delighted to see her write about her homeland, Russia.

I am now reading her novella, The Snows of Autumn, centeried on an elderly woman who has worked as a house servant for a Russian aristocratic family for fifty-one years.

Mel u