The Courilof Affair, By Irène Némirovsky, trs Sandra Smith

Irène Némirovsky is best known for her posthumously published masterpiece Suite Française, a chronicle of the fall of France which she wrote in miniscule handwriting in a diary during the Second World War. The Russian-born Jewish novelist was arrested under the Nuremberg race laws and died at Auschwitz. She did, however, publish 13 novels during her lifetime which display many of the great skills which make Suite Française so memorable.

The Courilof Affair is told in the form of the memoir of Leon M, who is given the task of liquidating Courilof, the Minister of Education, and thus takes up residency at Courilof's house where he gains insight into the complex motives of the country's rulers. Némirovsky depicts the spectrum of human emotions, and details those in power and those on the fringes of society, in haunting, beautiful prose. "Power, the illusion of influencing human destiny, is as intoxicating as smoke, as wine. When you have none, you feel an astonishing sense of suffering, of painful uneasiness."