Irène Némirovsky’s unfinished last novel, Suite Française, was published to international acclaim a few years ago, having been discovered among papers in a loft. As a result, many of Némirovsky’s works are appearing again in both French and English.
David Golder concerns a Jewish financier who has made a fortune speculating on gold and oil. His family are a loathsome bunch who are interested only in Golder’s ability to fund their extravagant lifestyles. Every single character in the book is utterly repugnant, Golder included.
Némirovsky, who was Jewish, died at Auschwitz in 1942. Here, she gives us a glimpse of the inter-war anti-semitism that Jews in France had to tolerate, the legacy of the Dreyfus affair never fully confronted. The anti-semitic content here is terrifying and offensive, and would be impossible to read if it were not written by a Jewish author. The fact that Némirovsky died in the Holocaust makes the horror one feels at this abuse even more acute.
David Golder is not a great book, and would probably never have resurfaced through a mainstream publishing house if it weren’t for Némirovsky’s sudden posthumous celebrity. But it is nonetheless fascinating as a caricature of a family at war with itself.
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