French
Chapter 4: Pierre Nerey
The choice of a pseudonym, 'Nerey', anagram of Irene, highlights the autobiographical character of The Enemy, novel where a young girl chastises her mother by biting her lover, before conceiving a suicidal shame.
“How could I judge her? Don’t I look like her?” (The Enemy, 1928)
The Ball renews the revenge of The Enemy, with more humor and a new weapon: Antoinette’s pity for her mother, whose worldly ambitions she ruined. Irène Némirovsky does not sign less «Nerey» this massacre game whose victims are a couple of Jewish parvenus.
Ir ne N mirovsky and his mother, around 1918.
© Fonds Irène Némirovsky/ IMEC
