More than a decade after its publication in the US, Irène Némirovsky's SUITE FRANÇAISE is perhaps known better today for the story about the book came to be than the story it tells. That's a shame, for the story it tells is extraordinary, but understandable, for the story of how it came to be told is extraordinary too.

It's a novel of France, of the early years of World War II, written by an author, Irène Némirovsky, as she lived through it. The "suite" refers to the five novellas she planned; only "Storm in June" and "Dolce" appear in this volume, though, because those were the only ones she had time to write before she was taken to Auschwitz. She died there in 1942, at the age of 39, of what was reported as "the flu."

Stuffed into a suitcase her daughters inherited, the manuscript went unread for decades. Indeed, her daughters were unaware it was a novel at all until decades later, when, having to decided to turn it over to an organization 'dedicated to documenting memories of the war,' the younger daughter, Denise Epstein, began to type it up and discovered what was really there.

And that was a masterpiece. The first novella, "Storm in June", depicts the arrival of the Germans; the second, "Dolce", the strange eye-of-the-storm calm that obtains once the Germans have taken charge.

These are war stories, in other words, but of the homefront--of very real people, their very real foibles, their inability to understand what's coming. As remarkable as Némirovsky's spare depictions of them, though, is the feat itself--she writes with a haunted, knowing air, as though she were writing this ages hence. But given how much she accomplished in such a short time, she could only have written this with the benefit of a few weeks' reflection--months at most.

Given the context, the stakes, the history, it may seem odd to conclude this note talking about a cat. But I can't not, precisely because of those stakes: Némirovsky not only gives the family cat an unsettling cameo in the book's opening pages, she later hands over an entire chapter to his point of view. The result is not cloying or cute nor in any way sweet. It's extremely real, moving, and by the time you reach the end of chapter 20 of "Storm in June," merciless.