The Fires of Autumn

About this book

The prequel to Suite Franaise: a coruscating powerful story about one mans rise and fall and the brutal impact of war. After four years of bloody warfare Bernard Jacquelain returns from the trenches a changed man. No more the nave hopes and dreams of the teenager who went to war. Attracted by the lure of money and success Bernard falls in with Rene and Raymond Dtang a couple whose life of luxuriant delinquency is supported by suspect financial dealings and loose morals. Yet when Rene Dtang throws him off he turns to his wholesome childhood friend Thrse for comfort. For ten years Bernard lives the good bourgeois life but the allure of the Dtangs draws him back and he abandons Thrse and their three children. But as another war threatens Bernard and his son Yves are called up together. Yet they have very different wars: young Yves dies a futile unheroic death whilst Bernard is captured by the Germans. He returns to Thrse now hiding in the countryside with her daughters (as Nmirovsky did herself in 1941) a broken man. The prequel to her masterpiece Suite Franaise The Fires of Autumn is a panoramic exploration of French life and a witness to the horrors of the twentieth century. Published posthumously in 1957 it is a coruscating tragic evocation of the reality of war and its dirty aftermath and the ugly colour it can turn a mans soul.