Irene Nemirovsky: A Jewish-Russian Inter-War Writer

Many critics have maintained that the Jewish Russian writer, Irène Némirovsky, was an anti-Semite. Writing in the interwar period of the early 20th century, Némirovsky often used stereotypical Jewish characters in her early writing. As her writing progressed, her subject was often on immigrants and their lifestyle choices in a foreign country. As a Jew, Némirovsky maintained that she could not be an anti-Semite. What forces in her life influenced her style of writing and was she against her own ethnicity? How did her formative relationships affect her style of writing? What was happening in France and Europe during this era to encourage Némirovsky to write with such complexity? Némirovsky's seminal relationships were influential in her lack of connection to her Jewish roots. Moreover, growing anti-Semitism in Europe affected her ambiguous beliefs. Finally, her style of writing fit smoothly into the emerging style of modernism, which offered a reflection of life in opposition to the previous romantic styles; writers left behind the romantic writing of the earlier era and began to include life with all its ugliness. Némirovsky was a combination of her upbringing.

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Lucy Beam Hoffman is a business owner, historian, writer, and scholar. Hoffman returned to college at 47, focusing on the Holocaust in graduate studies. She has written one novel, short stories, and co-written a play. The mother of three, she now teaches American History at Greenville Technical College, along with co-running The Write Place.