From the autumn 1939, Irène Némirovsky placed her daughters in the Burgundian village of Issy-l'Évêque, where she joined them in May 1940. La déroute des Français inspires him with an ambitious novel, funny and bitter, provisionally titled Panique... She is convinced to write, on this subject, her War and Peace. She then completes for the editions Albin Michel, who continue to support her, a biography of Chekhov.
But, subject to the prohibitions of the Status of Jews, her husband struck off from the bank that had employed him for fifteen years, she is forced to publish under a pseudonym in the anti-Semitic Gringoire, such " a lacemaker in the middle of the savages '. When, early 1942, even Gringoire stops helping him, the French no longer inspire him anything but 'hatred and contempt'. Arrested on July 13 and driven to Pithiviers, Irène Némirovsky will be deported four days later, followed by her husband
on October 9. It is at Denise and Élisabeth, their daughters, that it will be responsible for watching over sixty years on the manuscript of French suite...
